Experiencing the season of fall.In recent blog posts, we have shared some of our classroom experiences focused on expanding our understanding of and appreciation for the current season. It's evident that for the Brown Room children, fall means LEAVES. Children have collected leaves, researched their colors, explored their textures, and observed the changes that occur in the leaves throughout the season. Often, when diving deeper into a research topic, a teacher will invite a small group of children to gather together and engage in discussion about the shared interest. This is an opportunity for the children to share their existing knowledge with one another, ask questions, make hypotheses, debate, test theories, etc. The following document includes dialogue between Betsy, Elizabeth, Noah, William and Sam during a recent small group conversation that took place outside on the front lawn: When reflecting on this conversation, we noticed that the children were inclined to describe the season using all of their senses. They noticed changes occurring in what they could see (color), what they could feel (temperature, wind), what they could hear (wind, leaves), and even what they could smell. Betsy: It's like boom, vroom ,vroom, vroom. Oh! It’s like the cars. William: I hear wind and cars. Betsy: It’s like this… zoom, boom, vroom! It’s like the plane. (plane flying overhead when she says this) Noah: Wind sounds like blows! (blows out air) Betsy: It’s like a plane flying. So many leaves is blowing! - Noah The children have demonstrated a strong understanding of the connection between wind and the falling leaves that they observe during this season. Witnessing the falling leaves is both joyful and fascinating! Stay tuned for future posts about how we have expanded upon this interest in wind, leaves, and their movements! Bringing "Home Research" into the classroom... The children loved sharing their leaf collections with one another in the classroom. We have since used these leaves for many different classroom explorations including categorization, collage, print making, drawing, painting, and more. The following videos and images are from a small group experience where Betsy, Benji, Elizabeth, Graham, and Harry joined in sharing their leaf collections with one another.
Having leaves be a part of the daily experience in the classroom has led to such exciting, thoughtful, and joyous interactions and experiences. Our friends are clearly enjoying their continued research!
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Happy birthday, Nadia!When it was time for the Brown Room children to interview our friend, Nadia, in preparation for her birthday committee, they had a sneaking suspicion that Nadia would share that her favorite color is purple. Nadia has purple shoes. - Elizabeth Because Nadia likes purple. - Eloise Our friends were delighted when Nadia agreed; her favorite color is, indeed, purple! With that knowledge in mind, Nadia's birthday committee settled in to mix the purple that would be added to the frame of Nadia's weaving. We remembered that Nadia really enjoyed working with leaves to make leaf prints. Inspired by this, we decided to paint the frame of Nadia's weaving with a special, new tool - a leaf! I'm putting purple around this. - Eloise With the leftover purple paint, the committee headed to the easel to begin work on Nadia's birthday message! On the next day, they set to work to weave! The finished gift ....Time to celebrate!BabiesIf you have had the chance to stop in the Brown Room recently you may have noticed our "baby area". Stemming from a mutual fondness for babies and the shared experience of having younger siblings at home, we wanted to foster both this interest in caregiving and the growing awareness of each other's families through the addition of baby dolls in the classroom. Thank you to everyone who donated some baby items to add to this space in our classroom! We now have plenty of bottles, clothing, blankets, pacifiers, diapers, utensils, and toys to help care for our babies. Recently, while we wait for everyone to arrive for the day, children have started gathering in the baby area. This has offered opportunities for relationship building as well as extended discussions and information sharing about our individual families. What do we know about babies? Babies play... They like to play. She (Katherine) does tummy time. - Thomas I like to play with him (Lucas). He likes everything. He likes a duck. A yellow one. A nice duck. - Lily My baby likes the avocado. It goes shake, shake, shake. It’s soooooo soft. - Thomas She (Charlotte) likes the monkey. She shakes it. - Eloise She (Isabelle) does a shaker. Purple. Shake it. - William Babies eat... Babies burp... Babies get gas. The Mommy burps him. - Lily Mommy burps Lou. - Harry Sometimes they do spit up after they have milk. - Benji Mommy wears a towel (when she’s burping Lucas). - Lily Babies sleep... Caring for the Brown Room babies Elizabeth kisses her baby and says, "have a good sleep." William does the same. While caring for their babies, Benji, Dahlia, and Harry incorporated the idea of washing the baby clothes and doing laundry into their play and conversation. Benji and Harry cover a basket full of baby clothes with a blanket :
Benji: We need to do laundry. Put clothes in there. Now we need soap. Harry goes to retrieve a small block. Harry: This is soap. Dahlia: Then we need to fold. It’s ready! Harry: We need to wait. Benji: For the clothes to be ready. Dahlia: You’re right. Turn it on! What’s gonna happen? Benji: It bubbles. Following our leaf hunt, and leaf printing experience, the Brown Room children have continued to make increasingly complex observations about the colors, textures and transformation of the leaves around us. In order to research and foster this interest, we've introduced a number of books that illustrate and present a variety of learning concepts around leaves and the changing season. Leaf Man by Lois Elhert has been a favorite.
With such inspiration being taken from Leaf Man, we introduced a Leaf Man-inspired, natural materials collage provocation. After reflecting on the enthusiasm, creativity and connections evident in the process of our conversations around fall, leaf prints and collage, we thought about further opportunities for the Brown Room children to engage with leaves. We chose to also introduce clay impressions, the process of making a print by pressing a material into a slab of clay. As we have not yet worked with clay slabs in the Brown Room, we provided a wide variety of natural materials alongside the slabs in order to encourage a sensory, tactile experience with the clay.
Descriptive words we heard as the children worked: cold, smooth, squishy, sticky, bumpy. The finished pieces ...We went on a leaf hunt! - Thomas A number of weeks ago, Thomas' family got in touch with us to share that Thomas' grandmother, Cynthia, is a botanical artist, and wondered if she might be able to support us as we continue our work around color. Now that we see signs of fall all around us, we thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to engage our friends in the colors of the season - and to explore printmaking for the first time, using leaves! Cynthia shared that the best leaves for printmaking would be soft ones that have retained flexibility. To prepare, we decided to embark on a neighborhood walk to collect leaves for the occasion! But before we headed out, we wondered ....What color leaves will we find on our leaf hut?Gus: Green and yellow. Thomas: Orange leaves. Gus: Maybe red leaves. Elizabeth: Maybe purple and maybe brown leaves. Gus: They’re blowed down on the sidewalk. Lily: They change colors! Gus: Then there’s no more leaves. Sam: Do you know what season it is after fall when all the leaves have fallen off the trees? Thomas: Then it’s Christmas. After Christmas, then snow. Having made our predictions, we headed outside! As we searched, we made sure to look out for soft leaves, rather than crumbly ones. Those went in a special bag to carried back to school for printmaking. I love the tree. We make the tree feel happy! - Lily We even passed by some familiar spots on our walk! The next day, we were excited to welcome Cynthia - who Thomas introduced as Grammy! Kindly, she walked the children through each step of printmaking. First, choose a leaf. Then, select a paint color - and paint the bumpy side of the leaf. Place the leaf on paper, bumpy side down. Cover it with wax paper, and use a brayer to flatten it onto the paper. And you have a print!
Isa's BirthdayWhen asked about her favorite color, Isa referenced an item of clothing she was wearing at the time; a pair of pants that appeared to be not quite blue and not quite green, but maybe both? Isa's favorite color served as the perfect opportunity to introduce a new color name to the children - TEAL ! Teal looks like blue and green. - Dahlia Dahlia, Graham, and Lily served as committee members for Isa's birthday. They prepared a special teal weaving and accompanying message to present to Isa at her celebration. Using their teal palette, Graham, Dahlia, and Nadia painted a large easel paper with all of their variations of teal. Isa was consulted when deciding which variation of teal matched the vision of her "favorite" color. The selected favorite was then used to paint the frame for Isa's weaving! The large teal easel painting was then cut into paper strips to use as weaving materials to create Isa's special gift. Lily joined Dahlia and Graham to weave together and create a special message for Isa to include with her weaving. I can make a message! Is this teal? - Dahlia (searching for teal markers on our studio shelf) A Gift for Isa What words should we include on the birthday message for Isa? Let's Celebrate! Visual ProjectionsThe Brown Room children are continuing to develop a stronger understanding of the visual projections "calendar" in the classroom.
Visual projections are a form of documentation and provide a way for the children to read and interpret the work that is taking place in the classroom. They serve as a way to reflect on work that has already taken place, anticipate what is upcoming, formulate "plans" for our days together, and strengthen our awareness of the passage of time throughout our school year. During drop-off, we encourage you to take a moment to look at these together with your child! An Interest in the Bell TowerWe turn the key to open the door. - Harry The bell tower says ding, ding, ding. - Gus It’s a BIG bell. - Benji A huge bell! Like a big ice cream bell. - Gus I went up up up up up all the way to the bell. - Benji I’ll bring my toolbox to school to fix the bell tower! - Thomas [ Photos from the children's visits to the bell tower ] Constructing the Bell Tower in the Classroom...We're making a bell tower. The bell goes inside. - Gus R E D SChildren are exploring variations in color hue using a wide variety of mark making materials - focusing on "one" color family at a time! A BIG GIANT RED! - BenjiSpending time Outdoors"Photoshoots" inspired by our class picture days! A Halloween Walk With Our Rainey Room Friends
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April 2024
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