Revisiting Field Observations

Some of the children made paintings and illustrations of trees on our field trip to Montrose park.  This morning, we hung up all of our tree drawings and the children had a chance to talk about their work and share observations about each other's work.   Then the children made a second iteration of their drawing focusing on details they would like to include.

Jack revisited his drawing of a branch. He decided he wanted to start again on cardboard. He also found a photograph from the trip that had lichen that looked similar to the kind that grew on the original branch he drew, so he kept it for reference.

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Grace finds her drawing and begins to share: "I didn't want to do any roots. I wanted to but there is no more space for there to be roots." Grace continues describing her tree and begins counting the branches, she gets to 30. We look at the trees outside the window and notice there are tons of branches and realize Grace must have spent a lot time adding all those branches. 
After Grace presented her painting, Jossie explained her painting and notices her tree doesn't have as many branches.
"This is a tree in the winter. It has a big chunk of roots so I couldn't make more branches and I forgot to do the sky. "  Grace  Jossie wanted more branches, like Grace's tree. And Grace wanted to include roots like Jossie's tree. When the children were given the opportunity to exchange ideas about each other's work, they became inspired and thought of ways to evolve their own drawings. 

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Jossie's trees with roots and Grace's Rainbow Tree:

We are trying to get the children to notice details and talk about the specifics of what they notice or what they are drawn to.We noticed Margaret's drawing included many different shades of green. We looked at a plant in the classroom and noticed those leaves were also many different colors. Grace shared "Yeah because the light makes it light." Rowan added, "Yeah and the light makes it grow."

Lou Lou's initial drawing of a tree and her second version.