Thursday, September 21, 2017

Welcoming others...

,Happy Rosh Hashanah to all of you celebrating it! With Allison away Rainey Room welcomed our beloved sub from last year, Caroline Smith, along with her two sons (and St. John's alums) Adney and Eaton. We also welcomed back Dagny and were pleased to welcome Maisie's new baby brother, Finlay into the classroom for the first time!  

Mixing paints, making patterns...

A handful of children had not yet contributed their a jar of mixed paints to our new collection of paint colors. Although mixing paints may seem like a perfunctory activity, often it is not so simplistic. As Hugh stirred his multi-blend of pigments together inside a small baby food jar, Adney remarked, "Wow, that's a complex color." He also noted the physics happening within his own jar of paint: "I think the colors go down in the center and this pushes up the white. When I put in the red, the colors went up about a 1/4 inch." (Note the height/depth of the white in his jar--photo at top left.)

As observer and facilitator it is remarkable to witness the choices the children make in their exploration with the paints, as a medium of color, and the directions this takes them in an otherwise basic act of lift, squeeze, and stir. On some occasions it is this very aspect that fascinates and engages the children. It may also be their sense of control and independence over the manifestations of color and the element of surprise in the final outcome. Tegan's surprise seemed connected to  achieving an intended objective--to make purple: "I made purple because my favorite color is purple."

In many cases, the "all colors" black finds its way into nearly every jar (unless otherwise encouraged) leaving the question "why?" lingering just high enough to be out of reach. Then again, the children often engage in their act of paint mixing with a "more is better" approach. In which case, the black paint may just be along for "the more, the merrier" ride.  Of specific interest today was Tommy's choice to entertain pattern making when mixing his second jar of paint: "I'm making a pattern. First it's blue, then yellow, then red!" He called this color, "rainbow." Later on and perhaps inspired by Tommy, Dagny also declared, "I'm going to make a pattern."