Wednesday, April 11th

Have we mentioned how cute the ducklings are?  Today's mini-studio experience involved representing ducklings and other signs of spring with the tube watercolors.  The KW children had not used these paints yet this year and the results were stunning.  You can expect to see them on display soon!

The other materials experience involved making a next out of wire and a variety of found materials.  We first watched a short video about a duck building a nest.  During the video, children made these comments:
    Ellee - I think the dad is collecting stuff and the mom is building the next.  Just like honeybees.
   Rose - I think the mom is collecting stuff and the dad is organizing it.
   Hadley - You can see the nostrils on their beaks.
We then approached the table with a wire spoke-like base.
    Jill - What do you know about how birds make nests?
    Ellee - They find stuff to make it.
    Cassius - So we have to find stuff.
    Prater - This looks like the sun.  It's going to be beautiful.
    Jill - How will you attach the materials in order to build a nest?
    Cassius - Wrap it.

As the children began to wrap and weave the materials, they talked about their choices and their work.
   Hadley - Sticks, because nests are made of sticks.
   Rose - This is like a stick (a toothpick).
   Ellee - You can attach with pipe cleaners, too.  We can put our clay ducks in this nest.
   Max - We have to put a lot of things on this to make it floatable.
  Rose - For the ducks.  Because ducks live in water and their nests are near the water.

The nest is definitely a work in progress!  We will keep working on it..... stay tuned!