Cornbread!It has been awhile since our KW crew has had a cooking project. Today children measured and mixed to make cornbread for tonight's Winter Potluck! We were not sure if it would finish baking in time for a taste test, but right before we left for the day we were able to try it! We hope you will have a chance to sample it this evening. We also spent time with watercolors and building on the light table. Dagny began by building a three-story house with a family living inside. She could open up each level, to show where the people were. Tommy and Hugh were focused on building another awesome hotel. When they saw Dagny's work they were inspired! From that point, the children collaborated to make an even bigger hotel. When the hotel was complete, it was the site of a fancy wedding! Enjoy the images and have a great weekend!
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 Rodarte Inspired Fashion Design! Today the KW crew became a fashion design team! With a projected image from our field trip on display, children got to work dressing their own models with paper, foil, netting, wire, ribbon, tissue paper, fur, and other materials. We had some assistance from Molly and her son, Riley, who was subbing for Jessica today! THANK YOU, RILEY! Children enthusiastically added belts, headbands, bracelets, gloves, pants, and hats to their figures. Be sure to take a closer look on top of the Tucker Room cubbies tomorrow! The rest of the day was super fun as well. The afternoon started with Will Mazzetti's birthday celebration. The party featured pizza, cake, and a performance by the Great Zucchini! The magician had the children, and many adults howling with laughter. Classroom time featured message work and wintery watercolors. Grace was on a roll with the watercolor experience. She made beautiful mixed-media creations for every member of her family. We're already looking forward to tomorrow when we will make cornbread to serve at the winter potluck!
Wintery Watercolors Last week, we re-discovered how much we like working with watercolors. Today we decided to use that medium in a three-step process. Inspired by the wintery weather, we started with whitish and blue pastels and did some drawing. The next step was watercolors. After that, children were able to glue on small materials in the same white/silver/blue palette. The results were stunning! Fun with Fabricit's no secret that KW has been doing a lot of sewing. Today we spent a little time thinking about other uses of fabric. For example, we use fabric almost every day in our table settings. Children spent time decorating a set of play furniture with fabric for blankets, pillows, placemats, and centerpieces. Once decorated, it was fun to play in the new environment they created. Building on the light table was a lot of fun last week, so we provided that opportunity again. This group of children has been working and playing together for almost three years. In everything they took on today, both inside and outside, there was a great deal of communication and collaboration. We can't wait to see what happens tomorrow! Cate visits KWCate tried out KW today! We had a great time with her, beginning in the outside classroom where the children developed a couple of games involving the entire group. One game was the "Baby Tiger" game that has occurred in the past. The children assumed roles: Baby Tiger, played by Tommy Mom played by Cate Dad played by Hugh Sister played by Lily Brother played by Will In today's dramatization the children pretended it was Baby Tiger's Birthday. Hugh: He makes a great tiger family; he's hardworking. We have to start working early in the morning. Lily: Dad, can you go distract baby tiger? It's Baby Tiger's birthday. Hugh is making the cake and I am making the cupcakes. Will: I got the plates. Cate brought Baby Tiger to the table. The children sang "Happy Birthday." Lily to Cate: Mom, do you want a cupcake? Inside, the main attraction was a provocation we had set up as a way for the children to approach our Rodarte inspiration through a different language: building. We invited the children to build a 3D representation of one of their favorite dresses. The children chose the long purple dress with flowers, but remembered a previous day when they had developed a hotel. We suggested perhaps the hotel could be a fancy one, in the shape of a dress. Lily was excited about the idea. In the end, the children designed a "Fashion Hotel." Here is some of what was overheard while they worked: Lily: This is going to be a fashion hotel! Hugh: This is a diving board. This will be the pool. Cate: This is the garden. Hugh: Oh, we're making a white clear garden. Will: I have to make a path, right? Cate: Who will live in it? Lily: It's a fashion hotel! Cate: Yeah, but who will live there? Lily: Fashion clothes! Hugh: So many fashion people are going to come to the hotel. Our hotel is awesomer. Lily: How many people? 51? 52? Hugh: The beds are going to be all lined up. Cate: Don't forget the pool! Everyone can watch what we are doing and they can watch all the beautiful sights. Tommy: They should have a background where they can sunbathe. We should have sunbathing near the pool. You should make sunbathing beds. Hugh: We have to make a bed for sunbathing. Will: Here come the sunbathers. Tommy: We should have a park. You know, like...Montrose is a nice park. Hugh (holding Unifix cubes): These many people are coming. Oh. My. Gosh. Hugh: Will, can you help me make like an outside kitchen area, so people can like order. Oh! I forgot about the stove! Do you know how silly I was? I didn't think about a stove in the outside kitchen! Cate (Holding a plastic cube): I found the mirrors. This could be a stove. Hugh and Lily: We already have a stove. Cate: This can be a box for bad guys. Tommy: They are space ships! Lily: That's what I'm making...space ships! Tommy: These are for humans. Hugh: I have a really good idea! There should be something to do at our fancy hotel so they can go on these rocket ships. Lily: Or it can be a museum. Hugh: Yeah, so they can explore rocket ships. Tommy: These can be stairs. Hugh: Cool, I'm putting our really cool things in our museum. The children used Unifix Cubes as people on the space ship and also on the sunbathing beds. Cate and Will also chose to work with hand-sewing today. Cate sewed a variety of materials to some plastic packing material and Will sewed another book, this time for his grandma. He wasn't sure what materials to use for her and Jessica asked what his grandma likes. Will tried to think, "Um..." Cate said, "Well you know one things she likes; you!" In the end, Will used his grandma's favorite color, light blue, on the binding of the book. "I'm thinking while I'm sewing." Dagny Today was the first time Dagny has sewn this year and she took to it right away! In the morning she participated in a Tucker Room sewing experience and came to KW with a lot of ideas. Initially, she did a variety of hand sewing mixed media items. At that point, she and Tegan collaborated by taking turns on a swing project. Tegan - What I think she was making is a purse. Dagny, do you want to sew along this side? Dagny - There are no holes in it. It's perfect. Along with the purse, Dagny also sewed a bracelet and a message for Maisie. Tegan went on to sew a book with interesting textured papers. There was so much creativity on display in the sewing area today. Tommy sewed a walkie-talkie, and Maisie stitched the stem to a flower in her book. Although also involved in painting and collaging, Hugh also added to a previous hand sewing project. Rodarte-Inspired WorkChildren also worked on various dresses inspired by our field trip to the Rodarte exhibit. Lily traced two of the dresses that were projected onto easel paper. She then painted and added feathers to one of the drawings to give it a fluffy feeling. Hugh and Tommy added to the large paintings they created on Tuesday. Today they added fabric and paper to provide some texture to their creations. Tommy also drew a security guard near his fabulous dress! Louise and Grace spent time adding color and jewels to the dresses they had drawn at the museum. From there, several children moved on to watercolors to re-create fancy dresses, or just explore the medium.
We invited the children to use photography to document what aspects of the found fashion they were drawn to. Caleb especially utilized the language of photography to communicate his interests. Check out the following photos to gain some insight into the children's perspectives: Photos by GracePhoto by Louise Photos by CalebAlso today: we worked on some special top-secret messages, Tegan made a flower out of paper towels, and we enjoyed some birthday treats from our friend, Sam. Happy Birthday and thank you for sharing even though you weren't in KW today, Sam!
The DressesHere's a closer look at the dresses created today! Snow!Snow was a big topic for the children today. Outside they created a "melting mountain" in the sandbox. The children used sand and mud to cover up some of the remaining snow, explaining this would melt the snow. Inside they chose the book Snow for our pre-lunch story time. The children laughed at the characters and delighted in the way the city changed when it was covered in snow. Tommy even helped read some of the words including, "The whole city is white."
Open WorkshopsWe ended up with only a small group of Tucker room children in KW today at the end of what was a very full week for them, (two field trips and their fancy dinner party!) So on top of the snow fun, we let the children have some open workshop time to continue, complete, and create projects and explorations of their choosing.  Lily finished glazing some clay beads and continued her mesh hand-sewing project. Hugh chose to paint inside his hand-sewn book and Will worked in his machine-sewn book. Will finished writing the letters in his ABC book and gave it a title. Tommy sewed a book together on the sewing machine then gave his book a title as well. Between these books and a message Will created for this mom, there was a lot of talk about letters, spelling, and words including sounding out and carefully studying the letter form. On the sewing machine, Tommy practiced some flexibility of thinking when he accidentally sewed in an unattended spot. He got to use the seam-ripper and decided he liked the holes left behind by the mistaken stitches. He titled his book, Tommy's Art Book and explained, "I'm going to do art stuff. So I'm going to need watercolors, glue, stuff to glue on, and permanent markers." Over lunch we shared out experiences of yesterday's field trip with one another including what the pieces were made out of and how Will noticed the dates they were created, "One of them was when I was born," Will said. We're looking forward to reflecting on the Rodarte field trip with the larger group next week!"I can't wait to be dazzled!" Maisie That's what Maisie said as she walked from one room of the Rodarte exhibit into the next. It was dazzling! Children closely looked at the various dresses and decided which ones they liked best. Many children also had the opportunity to draw and/or take photos of their favorite pieces. Some children worked on new camera skills, like using the zoom feature. Caleb used the black and white filter on one photo, because he said, "That made it stand out." Caleb and Tommy were drawn to the signs by each dress that told when it was made and what materials were used to make it. Will was especially interested in the dates, and made a list of each date he saw in the exhibit. Elena loved every dress she saw. Many children agreed with Louise, who said, "I loved the purple flower dress."  "All of the red dresses were my favorite." SamThe red dresses made an impression on several children. There was also a few Star Wars dresses that featured Luke, Yoda, and the Death Star. Upon viewing the Luke Skywalker dress, Tommy said, "That looks like what Luke was wearing." He made sure to take photos of the dresses and materials used so he could make it at school. He plans to make two copies, one for school and one for his mom. Other favorites included the spiky shoes! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!There is no way we could ever fully express our gratitude to our wonderful parent community. Many thanks to Helen for coming up with this tremendous ideas and making it happen. We are so sorry that you and Lou Lou couldn't join us today. A big thank you goes to Jessie Sterchi for getting us free passes to this fabulous exhibit! Thanks to Molly, Jessica Kuhn, Alicia, Wes, Carla, Clare, Marguerite, and Katherine who made this trip possible by serving as chaperones and drivers! We can't wait to reflect on this experience with the children!
Gluing, Glazing, and StitchingToday we furthered our work with beads and books by making more paper beads, (repetition helps us build those skills!) glazing the previously formed clay beads, and stitching in our mixed-media books. Grace and Louise had a chance to make machine-sewn books and were thrilled to make their choices of "special paper" to sew between the pages of watercolor paper. Elena and Caleb were interested in returning to the sewing machine to sew other materials to the cover and pages of their books from yesterday. All of the children had the opportunity to practice guiding their work through the machine independently as these thick books tend to go off-track. The children also used the thread-cutter on the side of the machine and Caleb was able to help wind a bobbin! Gluing Paper BeadsGlazing Clay BeadsBooksSnow FunWe also had a grand time playing in the snow. Tegan led a game about Crystal City where the children searched for crystals, there were some mini-snowball fights, a game of hide and seek, and snow creations. We're looking forward to our field trip to see the Rodarte Exhibit tomorrow! |
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November 2023
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