We were mixing. - VanSince the beginning of the year, we've been discussing - as both a teaching team and staffwide - how and when to introduce the wonderful paintbrushes and paints that were created during May's New Parent Reception. With our friends expressing so much fascination with the process and results of mixing watercolors, we decided to introduce tempera paint mixing. This led to a conversation about how many of the Brown Room's grown-ups came to St. John's to mix paints, in much the same way we did! With the children's understanding of paint mixing enriched by experiencing it for themselves, we introduced the New Parent Reception paints & paintbrushes on Friday of last week. I choose the one with the bow. - Lily The diversity in structure of each paintbrush meant that children had to adjust their technique depending on the brush that they were using. Brushes with more pointed materials at the tip, like sticks and leaves, caused children to use small, careful movements to create lines, dots - and occasionally splatter paint. Meanwhile, brushes with cotton-ball and fur ends lent themselves to full-body movement as children spread the highly saturated brush across the easel. Look, look! I made that! - William The children observe their collaborative murals, made using paints from May's New Parent Reception. P.S. Happy Halloween! Thank you to Rainey Room & Tucker Room for hosting fabulous school-wide festivities today, including pumpkin exploration, Halloween-inspired collage and construction, "potion-making" and story-sharing.
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Birthdays in the Brown Room fall right at the intersection of two of the children's fascinations: color, and one another! We explore color through gathering, and weaving with, diverse materials of the celebrant's favorite color, and we learn more about one another through research into their preferences. Earlier this month, we prepared to interview our next celebrant....I got the green! - BetsyTo prepare to weave Sam's birthday present, Sam's birthday committee searched the school for green weaving materials.
With their materials in hand, Sam's Birthday Committee was ready to weave. But first, we decided to utilize our newly-mixed green watercolors to add even more color by painting the frame, and the base for Sam's birthday message. We're painting the picture. - Harry She's gonna be surprised. - BenjiOn to the weaving! A few days later, it's time to celebrate Sam's school birthday! ... and bring out her present!Thank you...for coming to Classroom Stories Night! It was so nice to have everyone gather together for an evening of sharing, learning, and laughter. We hope you enjoyed gaining a better understanding of what the children have been up to in the Brown Room for the past few weeks! If you'd like to take a look through the presentation slides, they have been printed and are hanging in the classroom on our documentation wall. As we mentioned on Thursday evening, the children have been experimenting with COLOR. Today, we'd like to share some of these recent explorations with you. The children are gaining a stronger understanding of the properties of color when working with primary colors to create secondary colors and experimenting with the cause and effect of color mixing. Here are some of the books we have read together in the classroom that have inspired our work and supported our understanding while expanding our existing knowledge of color! Color Mixing with Watercolors
How many different GREENS can we create? I put blue on yellow and it changed. - Lily Blue to yellow makes green. Oh my! It made green. - Betsy The children are also beginning to sort, organize, and categorize color hues into different collections or "families". As their understanding of color variation continues to develop, children have chosen to give names to some of their different color findings and creations. We hope to continue researching and collecting to add to our growing color collections! You can find this documentation in our classroom studio. Color Collections Giving names to the colors we've mixed...
Our first birthday celebration in the Brown Room!Last week, we celebrated our first birthday of the school year. Our friend, Noah, recently turned three years old! This was the children's first experience celebrating a friends birthday at school and therefore, their first exposure to all of the traditions that come with birthday celebrations at St. John's. When initially introducing the idea of a "school birthday celebration" to the children, we first asked them to share their thoughts about birthdays... What is a Birthday? Happy birthday. I singed it. - Elizabeth I sing it! - Eloise Eat cake. - Thomas Blow candles. - Lily While we don't always eat cake at our school birthday celebrations, the children's ideas around the concept of a birthday were representative of many parts of our school birthday traditions.
The birthday child then walks around our special birthday candle while the children count each lap around the candle to correspond with their friend's age.
Presenting and Receiving the Gift At the beginning of each year, classroom teachers make a decision about the type of birthday gift the children will create for each other during the school year. The decision is one made with much intentionality and is often related to a previously observed interest of the collective class, mastery of a specific material or technique, or perhaps a way to introduce and experience something brand new for the children. Although what will be produced is decided by the teachers (ie. a weaving), each gift is created by the children themselves and is only done so after taking time to research together, obtain important information about their birthday friend, and then use this information to then create something thoughtful, beautiful, and uniquely individualized for the birthday child. I was the birthday committee! - GusElizabeth, Gus, and William were the members of our first birthday committee for our friend, Noah To inform their work, Noah was "interviewed" during a recent morning meeting. The birthday committee then used this information to support the birthday work moving forward. Noah's Birthday Interview - September 25th, Morning Meeting Sam: Noah, your birthday is coming up and we need to know something. I have a question for you. Do you have a favorite color? (Noah nods) Sam: What’s your favorite color? Noah: Red! Sam: Oh, Noah likes the color red. Lily: I like pink. Sam: We all like different colors. Eloise: I like purple. Van: I like pink. William: I like yellow. Sam: Now that we know that Noah likes the color …? Elizabeth: Red! Sam: What color do you think Noah’s birthday present will be? Thomas, Eloise and William: (in unison) Red! Sam: We’re going to make Noah a red present. Lily: We’re gonna make one. We’re gonna make one! A big one, like this big. (Lily holds both arms up in the air above her head) We were looking for red stuff for Noah’s birthday. - Gus
Noah receives his birthday gift - a weaving made of red materials to represent his favorite color. The children also collaged a message to accompany Noah's weaving. Inspired by Noah's favorite color, in the message they shared some of their ideas about other things that they are reminded of when working with the color red. He can open it and see red! - Lily The Birthday Calendar Celebrating a birthday is an ideal opportunity to introduce both our classroom birthday calendar ... and the All-School Birthday Calendar... The birthday calendar is always there. All day. It’s names and colors. - Lily We are looking forward to sharing a bit more about birthdays with all of you during our upcoming Classroom Stories Night presentation on Thursday, October 19th! In anticipation of this exciting evening, we will be dedicating our afternoon teacher work time to preparing the presentation and materials for this evening to share with all of you. Therefore, we will not be able to post our typical blogs over the course of the next week. We thank you for your understanding and cannot wait to share more of the classroom work with all of you very soon! When reflecting on the post we shared around clay earlier this week, we (the teachers) were able to newly appreciate the depth and complexity of the work being done in the Studio. As they worked with this new material, the Brown Room children made so many connections and had so many unique inspirations and explanations for their creations. We had to make another post about clay! Today, scissors were available to use with clay. This served a dual function: to support our friends as they continue to gain mastery over scissor use, and as a way to introduce the use of clay tools. Many children also expressed a desire to "make my symbol", which led to the introduction of symbols encased in frames, placed on the table for inspiration.
Gus makes a "skeleton", while William uses scissors to cut tiny pieces off a flattened piece of clay and Betsy pokes holes in her clay, emulating Elizabeth. P.S. Brown Room will be leading Sing-A-Long tomorrow! Check out the children practicing with Sam below. Please note that you're welcome to join us even if it's not a school day for your child. An Introduction to ClayWe are making clay! - Benji As our Brown Room friends settle into their classroom community, we continue to offer them new experiences to enrich their ability to express themselves, gain mastery in the school environment and connect with their peers. Last week, we introduced clay for the first time. We wanted to make our friends' first experience with clay an opportunity to both explore and connect. We've found that the children's family pictures and photo albums have been an excellent conduit for connection. As the children chat about their families, they discover common ground, and marvel over what makes each family unique. With this in mind, we made sure to include family photos in our first clay experience. While preparing for this experience, we decided on a list of questions that would serve as a framework for our observation and documentation. As the children worked, we made notes of the strategies, connections, and expressions they each used. Noah stacks the clay. Noah: Papa not falling! Sam: I’m hearing that you made Papa. Who else is in your family? Noah: Mama and Noah. Sam: I'm wondering if you made Mama, would she be bigger or smaller than Papa? Noah: Mama so short. Noah: And not Dove. He begins to transform the clay into Dove (family dog). Noah: Dove looks like mud. Dove has a tail. Harry: I make a dog. Tate: Harry, do you have a dog at home? Harry: I have Lily at home. Eloise: I have a dog, Lainey! Isa: Percy! Dahlia: I don't have a dog, but I do have Baby Leif. Eloise: My baby sister's name, Charlotte. Harry: My baby sister in Mommy's tummy. Baby sister be so cute! Please find some of the finished pieces below. |
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May 2024
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