The Birthday Committee During the discussions of the school's birthday, the children made many suggestions for potential gifts. While exploring the possibilities, we've worked with a variety of languages; clay, collage, paint, tracing and drawing. Throughout all of our explorations, one thread the kept arising was "the school's favorite colors." Ford: Maybe St. Johns’ favorite color is all the colors. Karen: Why do you think it could be all the colors, Ford? Ford: (Pointing to the St. John’s Symbol) It has all the colors in there. Karen: Is that the St. John’s symbol? Ford: Yeah. What Are Our School's Favorite Colors?Over time, the children have been by trying to determine what the school's favorite colors were. To do so, children ventured out of the Brown Room in search of colors that stood out to them in the school environment. When their photographic research was complete , it included blues, greens and reds. Mixing the Colors of St. John'sOn the first day, children mixed different shades of green in the studio. The children looked at photographs of a plant from the hallway, green objects on the light table in the greeting hallway and the tunnel from the outdoor classroom, each a different shade of green. they also examined an array green paint samples. Ragnar and Bailee worked together first, followed by Ford and Rawls. Bailee giggled as she adds yellow paint to her jar after the blue: The paint is blue. The yellow is sitting on the blue. Karen : Hmmm, but do we have any green paint here? Ford: NO! (shaking his head). Rawls: We have to mix them up! Karen: Do you have any idea what colors we need to mix to make green? Rawls: Blue! Yellow! (pointing to both bottles) Ford: Yellow and blue. Rawls: Green! Green! Green! Ford: A lot of yellow and a little blue. Rawls: Squeeze. Squeeze. Karen: Ford, when you say a little bit, what does that mean? Ford: Just a little bit. Karen: Does it mean 1 squeeze, 2 squeezes, 3 or 4? Ford: Just one squeeze. Karen: What’s happening? What do you notice, Ford? Ford: It’s getting green. Rawls: I need to mix it up. Karen: What color did we make? Ford: Green. During our project time on Wednesday, we mixed three shades of blue. Cal and Louisa tried their hand at mixing colors first. Ellie also joined later in the morning. Bailee enjoyed mixing colors so much on the first day that she also joined in again. Karen: Today we are going to make colors of other things that we’ve found in the school. Let’s look at these pictures. Where do you think they were taken? Cal looked at the photograph of the wooden steps in the balcony: I think that’s where a tree fell down.K: Why do you think that? Cal : Where you go into the library, the tree fell down? K: So you think that looks like the wood from the tree that fell down at the library? Cal: Yeah. And they chopped it down. Karen: And what color to you see there? Cal: Uh, I see grey. Karen: Louisa, Cal, do you know this picture? Louisa shakes her head “no.” Cal: That’s from the door! Karen: From the doorway, and what color do you see there? Cal: Blue. Karen: Do you see a color here that sort of matches the door? Do you see one here (pointing to the paint chips). Louisa chooses a paint chip and holds it up to the photograph to compare the colors: No! Not that one. Too light! Ellie picked up a paint sample: That one. May I have that color please? Karen: Louisa, can you show Ellie what we did first to make the blue? Louisa: That one (pointing to the blue acrylic paint). Ellie tried to squeeze the blue acrylic into the jar: It don't squeeze! Ellie added blue and white to the mixing jar. She began to stir: It turn! Karen: What we were trying to make in this jar? Louisa: Paint! Light blue! On the final day of mixing colors, we explored the reds of the school environment. We looked at photographs taken by Ramsey and Fay of the red brick sidewalk and by Ford of the red clay number line in the atrium stairwell.
Karen: Ramsey, do you remember taking any of these photographs? Ramsey: This one. This one. This one. This is inside (the number line in the hallway). And this was outside (the brick sidewalk). In the sun. Isabelle: It’s a little bit. It’s the same. (looking at a the “brick red” paint chip and the photograph of the brick sidewalk). Ramsey: No. It’s dark red. Karen: If we’re making dark red, what should we start with? Ramsey pointed to the jar of red acrylic paint: This red! And black. Ramsey added red and black to the jar and began stirring it: It’s turning stripes. Isabelle described the paint as it dripped own the inside of the jar when she squeezed it out: It’s falling down. The paint. Ramsey: I’m mixing. Look at mine. Not stripes. It’s just black now. Isabelle: I want to add some more red. Ramsey: More red please. Isabelle: I need more red. Ramsey looked at his mixture: It’s too red. But I need more red. This is Red-Black. Ragnar and Louisa looked at the photographs of red items from around the school. They compared the selection of red paint chips to the red photographs. Ragnar: This one is not these. Louisa: The same. Karen: What should we start with to make red? Ragnar: Green. No. Red! Louisa: I would like white please. Ragnar: I want to add some blue. I want to add some of that (pointing to the white acrylic). I see blue-red. I think we need black now. This is kinda cool (as he mixed the paint in the small jar). It’s getting all black. It’s Black-Black-Red Cover ‘cause it’s all black, the black covered the red!
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With the studio full of school birthday work (to be featured on the blog tomorrow!) the rest of Brown Room was abuzz with building, collaging, sewing and message making. For the second day in a row, we offered our transparent collage materials which Ellie, Emma and Seon all spent time working on at the light table. We also traded out our wire table for a sewing table and Fay, Emma, Win and Ellie were quick to choose that as their first plan for the day. Emma: This (the fabric on her hoop) is like a picnic blanket! Ellie: I have stitch Emma: I do have a stitch. Ellie: I need more (thread), brown please! Win: Look at this (threading a bead on her string) Ellie: Ooh, bells! I want to do bells! Fay: I made a stitch with two beads. I think it (the thread) is done because you can’t pull it anymore. I put on three (bells) now the last one, now the last bead! Ellie: I need help, the bells didn’t go. Win: Look what I did! (a stitch) Fay: It’s so beautiful! I’m going to add this gold piece. Fay: I have a sewing machine at my house. I help mommy with sewing every day. Emma: I’m going to tie it off and cut it. Fay: First I’m going to pull some of these (bells) Win: I want to play, I’m done. Emma: oh, I want to play. I’m going to the grocery store. At the message center, Cal explored making marks on his message using a motorcycle toy from home. "Look at those tracks, see Elena it's tracks. How does that make the tracks?" - Cal. We tried making the same tracks outside on the sand, but the prints were less distinct so Cal, Ellie, and Fay decided to "dig a road". The warm weather makes everyone want to jam out, so enjoy the musical stylings of Fay and Emma on the xylophone! :)
Exploring Transparent Collage Over the course of this Brown Room year we’ve explored collaging with a variety of materials. In the beginning of the year we collaged portfolio tags using warm and cool materials and explored metallic collages on cardboard bases. Today we used our same skills to collage with transparent materials at the light table, but these transparent collage bases had an extra special twist! “It’s like Mimi’s photo” said Fay looking at the light table, and she was right! We took Mimi’s tracing of the school door, shrunk it, and printed it on transparent paper. Then we loaded the light table up with all kinds of blue and white see-through materials and invited the children to collage onto the St. John’s school door.
All these beautiful collages and more will be hung up for display this Friday during our school birthday celebration!
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