November 17th, 2020

Jade's birthday traditions

Jade shared photos of her birthdays at home with us during morning meeting on Monday. The children were especially interested in the balloons they found in the pictures and the beautiful cakes she had over the years. Thank you for sharing these wonderful photos with us, Jade! We can't wait to celebrate your 3. birthday with you tomorrow. 

Hugh: Hey, there is is many pictures of balloons.  I had a fire truck one at my birthday.
Daniel: I had a lion one at mine.
Jade: It's not a balloon. It's a bear.

Lily: Two cakes!
Jade: I have a Woody one! (remembering her Toy Story birthday cake)
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​Watercolor paint? I would be so happy if we do that! 
- Daniel
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 During our morning meetings we are discussing our plans for the day. The children get to choose what they would like to start working on.
​On Monday Daniel was especially excited about the option to paint with watercolors in the light table. A few children started their day with that and another group went into the studio to work on our Thankful Tree. Since we have been exploring the language of collage in the beginning of the year in different ways (with paper, small loose parts or natural materials), we wanted to include this interest in our Thanksgiving Feast center piece. Another interest of the Brown Room is COLOR. We explored and studied colors during birthday committees, painting with different kinds of paint and the children are looking forward to finding rainbows in front of their cubby every day (and are missing it deeply on cloudy days). The children used a wide ribbon as their collage base and added string, cellophane paper, tissue paper, ribbons or small pieces of fabric in different colors onto it with glue. These collages got wrapped around our Thankful Tree.

Cate: I choose string. That! I found purple. Purple is my favorite color. I sticked them on.
Finlay: Mine is awesome. I put leaves. I out this on it. It's gold (pointing to a piece of silver ribbon). 
Cate: It's for the giving tree. A rainbow (glueing cellophane paper in the colors yellow, orange, green, blue, purple and pink in a rownexbt to each other)
Bea: Do you know what I'm making? I'm making a thank you tree. I put all the glue on. This is a rainbow.
Daniel: I'm done now. Wow, that's so many stuff on it. I have to put it on the thank you tree. Now I'm gonna do water colors now.

On the light table we worked on creating the thank you notes for our tree. During their work the children noticed a change in the shade of colors depending the amount of water they used and explored intensities of colors on their paper. The more water they used the lighter the color got. 

Bea: I'm gonna paint a nice nice monster that gives kisses and hugs.
Jade: I'm making a scary monster.
Hugh: I'm making a colorful rainbow.
Lily: I'm making a machine. 
Jade: I'm making a rocket ship.
Bea: It's a bird. 

We wanted to say thank you to Finlay's family for sending in their
beautiful thank you note for our tree.

If you haven't already, please send in your family's thank you note for our
Thanksgiving feast center piece by Friday, Nov. 20.  
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Combining wire and clay

Many children have asked us last week if we could use clay again. And of course we can! Today we offered both, clay and wire. Pieces of wire were used for different purposes in different ways.

Wire as a tool
Bea and Daniel each chose only one piece of wire first and used it the cut smaller pieces off a big piece of clay. Cate and Finlay poked multiple wires into their clay to create 'holes". Remy chose to not get a piece of wire but instead chose a tool from the shelf to create bigger and wider holes. Luke first used one wire to poke  holes into his clay while saying "Bee hole. Bee hole." He then showed interest in Remy's tool which she kindly shared  with him and assisted him in creating a similar kind of hole. After pushing clay into a small glass jar, Daniel also used wire to pull the clay back out.

​Connecting clay and wire
Daniel then experimented with combining clay and wire by adding smaller pieces of clay on top of his flattened out wire. He continued until his entire piece of wire was covered in clay. Lily also combined her pieces by using her wire as an arch - one end in a piece of red clay and the other end in a piece of grey clay. She then pushed both pieces of clay towards each other until they met. 

Forming shapes / movement of information
​Lily started to shape small amounts of clay to balls by rolling it between the palms of her hands. Bea noticed it and asked her for assistance on achieving the same. She also experimented with rolling clay on the table in a circular movement with more and less pressure. Finlay listened to Bea's comments about her work and then shapes his clay into small balls as well. He added two small balls to a piece of wire ("a snowman"). In response, Daniel asked how to shape his pieces. He then created a different shape - a coil - by moving his hands back and forth instead of a circular motion. This way information traveled from one end of the table to the other and transformed in the process. 
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A medium for story telling and collaboration
Luke and Remy sat next to each other and at first worked on their own, observing the other one's work. Luke began to go over to Remy and say "Play with me." After Remy added another large piece of clay to her original piece she offered him to join her. They changed ideas, mirrored each other's work and created "cakes" and "birthday cakes" together by layering slabs of clay on top of each other.

Finlay poked a pieced of wire through a flat slab of clay while holding the pice of clay horizontally ("a popsicle") he then turned in sideways, now holding both sides of the wire with the piece of clay in the middle ("a rolling pin"). He started to rock or swing it back and forth singing "Row row row your boat".

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​Thank you for the trees.
Because they give us leaves. 
​- Hugh
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The persimmon tree in the outdoor classroom seemed to have changed colors over night (or over 4 days of not being at school). The bright yellow and orange leaves were so inviting to jump in and to throw around.