On Monday, we celebrated the 26th birthday of our beloved school! It was a wonderful day, and we are grateful to everyone who came to celebrate with us! As you may recall from our blog, this has been quite the process for the Brown Room, and the entire school! The time has finally come to share more about how we "made a face for St. John's". A mouth for St. John's
All school collaborationThe Brown Room's conversations were shared with the children in Tucker Room and Rainey Room (and also during KW). While conversations happened in each classroom about how we might give St. John's a mouth, and the children were drawing self-portraits as a starting point, Joci began taking small, mixed age groups into the atelier to brainstorm and draw together. The next step was to use the overhead projector and Plexiglas easel for large scale tracing. This was new to Brown Room, so Tucker Room children were invited in to support them with this new technique. Below, Eliza and Cully are tracing a smaller drawing of George's that has been projected.
The finishing touchesGeorge, Henri, and Lucas (Tucker Room/Zoe's brother) painted the mouth, teeth, and tongue. Meanwhile, Rainey Room, Tucker Room, and KW were working on the two eyes for the school! We're making a giant eye. The school is big so it has to be big. We can reflect it onto the school. - Remy, 5.4 years (Tucker Room) "I want a hat for the celebration." - Georgia, 3.3 yearsA face for St. John'sWalking around the candle as we counted to 26 to mark the 26th birthday of St. John's Preschool! The Tucker Room children had a theory that the blue door should be used to blow out the candle! A little magic behind the scenes!A huge thank you to Joci who worked with all of the small groups in the atelier to make this happen! And, to Elena, Molly, and Joci for hanging the face on the school! A more permanent home...The St. John's face is hanging in the main staircase with our 25th birthday documentation! Please take some time to check it out with your child! We know they are all so excited to see it!
0 Comments
Some of the children knew what the church looked like and knew that there was not going to be a bell tower. There was a bit of debate though about whether or not there would be an actual bell. They also suggested that we might find a clock at the church, but we were unsure whether or not it would be connected to the bell. Walking to the church/bellRinging the bellA big thank you to Camille (Finlay's mom - Tucker Room) for inviting us to come to the church and for helping us ring the bell! It took a lot of strength and effort to pull the rope. But where is that bell?
Reflecting on our tripCan you imagine what the bell might look like at Georgetown Presbyterian? Do you think it looks like our bell in the bell tower?
Georgia rings one small red bell, and say, "Alright, let' start!" "My bells are louder." -Cully "I hear it." -Georgia Happy 3rd Birthday, Christopher!Enjoy the long weekend, everyone!Happy Valentine's Day part I! We will continue the celebration tomorrow! The children collaged their bags and they are beautiful! We hope everyone had a great day and felt the love! Thanks to Emma, one of our Rainey Room teachers, for the fun glasses which made for fun portraits! Clay UpdateIntroducing Weaving - Spider looms"Why isn't there a spider on it?" - Will, 3.4 years A few things to know:1. Any images you want to save from the blog should be downloaded asap as they tend to change as the year goes on (if two images from two classrooms have the same name, it can often change the blog post). Additionally, our blog will be archived at the end of our Tucker Room year. It is nice to start saving them now if you would like to!
2. We have an upcoming field trip on Friday, February 24th. Please see your email for additional information . 3. St. John's Birthday celebration will be on February 27th starting just before noon on the front lawn. Additional information is in your email! Wire Comes to Morning MeetingWire was briefly introduced in the fall, and it's back with more intention to explore further. We brought some wire to morning meeting with the intention to show and share it. However, every now and again the material influences the engagement level and morning meeting becomes a fluid beginning into the full experience. This was one of those times! "It's like paper. ... And then you bend it like this and then through... "Look what I made!" -Georgia Thinking About St. John's Birthday FaceBirthdays are enthusiastically embraced by the children, and St. John's birthday has been no exception. In thinking about the upcoming birthday celebration for St. John's, we continue to invest thought and effort into self-portraits. Here, we projected an image of St. Johns onto the easel with the intention to give St. Johns a face. Offering children new approaches also presents new ways of seeing and doing. The provocation can also be a part of the process! Happy Birthday, Elyse!Thank you everyone for making Elyse's birthday celebration a special and momentous occasion.
Happy Friday and happy Valentines Day weekend!
“How will St. John’s walk around the candle? How will it blow out the candle?” - Will, 3.2 years “We should get a candle.” - Eliza, 3.0 years “I’ll draw the mouth.” - Cully, 3.2 years “I will draw the biiiiig smiley mouth.” - Eliza, 3.0 years “I will draw a big mouth.” - Gracie, 3.0 years For St. John’s? - Elyse “You [Elyse] will draw the ears.” - Cully, 3.2 years “A nose.” - Cully [about what Melanie could draw] “Then you get closer and blow it out.” - Adaline Can St. John’s do that? “No. No. St. John’s can’t walk because it don’t have feet. I have feet. I can walk.” - Cully, 3.2 years What would that look like?After a discussion with the whole team at staff meeting, we invited the children to imagine a mouth on St. John's. All classes at St. John's are participating in this conversation and project - Brown, Rainey, Tucker, and KW. Joci has also been working with mixed age groups in the studio. We'll tell you more about this later - after the birthday celebration! Our first approach was to provide images of St. John's and invite them to look at their own mouths (faces) in the mirror and imagine where they might put a mouth on the school's facade. We asked Brown Room: What does a mouth look like? What would the mouth look like for St. John's? For a school! Where would the mouth be on the school? How big is the mouth? What color would it be? As we observed the children looking in the mirror and drawing on the image of St. John's, we paused to consider if this was the best first step. They were thoughtful about where the mouth should be placed - most of them suggested the bell tower. The children were enjoying making faces in the mirror, watching their mouths move, and talking about what they saw. We observed that when they went to draw on the image of St. John's, they were not looking to the mirror for reference about what to draw and how. We began to reflect on these observations and reflect on whether there was a different approach to thinking about a mouth for the school. Was there a better way to support the children's ideas about the mouth? We discussed it as a team and as a staff. Self-PortraitsAs a team, we decided to invite the children to draw a self-portrait. The approach - mirrors, black felt pens, small groups of children - would be similar, but the invitation would be about drawing themselves. The children continued to make silly faces, laugh, and stick out their tongues. But, they also began to look closely at the finer details of their faces - eye brows, eye color, eye lashes, skin color, the movement of their tongues, etc. We also observed that without the distraction of St. John's' image, the children were looking in the mirror, looking down to their paper, drawing, and looking back to the mirror to reference what they saw and wanted to draw. These were incredibly joyful small groups. The two different approaches to thinking about "a mouth for St. John's" were both meaningful, informative about the children's thoughts/ideas/processes, and created a lot of dialogue around faces, birthdays, and our school. They were both important to this school-wide project. Here are some fo the children's self-portraits: Christopher, 2.11 years A mouthWe encourage you to take some time to look closely at the children's portraits in the Brown Room. They are on our "Current Threads" board above the portfolio drawers. Please feel free to take them down for a closer look. The children would be thrilled to walk you through their work. We'll also leave some post-its nearby if you have any observations, questions for us or the children, or thoughts from your child. We'll share more about the mixed age group work that is happening in the atelier with Joci after the birthday celebration. We know that you all will be so thrilled to see the work the children have been doing! It's absolutely amazing! More details will come soon about the celebration, but parents will certainly be invited! Additionally, even if it is not your child's day for attendance, we invite you to join us! We loaded the kiln!Our first clay pieces have been fired! Jill helped us load the kiln as promised! The pieces are proudly displayed in the windows between the classroom and studio! Please take a minute to look at the children's beautiful sculptures!
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2024
Categories |