Using Our New Easel Paints

We were excited to have our first in-person chapel with families on Wednesday morning. As always, the Brown Room led, "This Little Light of Mine" enthusiastically. After chapel, we returned to the Brown Room for morning meeting, where it was revealed that we would be using our new easel paints during project time. We were excited to see the reaction the children had to using paints that they have mixed themselves. Emma, Fay, Isabelle and Mimi were thrilled to be the first friends to try out the new colors and shades on Wednesday.

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On Thursday, we added photographs of spring flowers to the easel area as a provocation. Some children continued working with clay and dinosaurs in the studio as well, and the very presence of the dinosaurs nearby inspired some of our easel paintings.
Rawls: I’m doing one paint at a time. I paint a eating flower.
Ramsey: I'm making the dinosaur’s body.
Rawls: I’m going to make a dar, dar, brown. Blue and purple makes brown? I think? 
Rawls tried mixing the blue and the pink.  Pink and blue makes purple! How cool is that? How cool is that? Rawls pointed to the blue and pink paints: This and this makes purple! This and this makes purple! This and this makes purple! He then looked over  at Ramsey’s painting: What about your painting, Ramsey?
Ramsey: My painting is a dinosaur.
Rawls: My painting as a eating flower, like the eating flower on Scooby Doo, Doo, Doo!

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On the right side of her paper, Seon chose yellow first. Then she layered pink over the yellow. She covered the first two layers with blue next. Then she used yellow and green to paint parallel vertical strokes on the left side of her paper. She finished with a orange shape which arched over the rest of her strokes. She then described here painting, "This is my house."

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Ford: Because it's my favorite color (purple). I like it (purple). This is a rainbow (as he painted a green arc around the purple from the bottom of the page to the top).

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Isabelle: I painting this one. Inside all the flowers. See, look. I made it (pointing to a photograph of white buds on a tree). Now I made more. I mix the colors again because I not done.
Seon: What color is this (as she picked up the darkest purple)?
Isabelle: Hmmm. Black. 
Ellie: The purple is real nice. I covered them with my orange paint. For Emma. For Emma. Emma likes paint. I put all my paint. 

Ellie's "Dinosaur."

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Louisa: I’m going to use yellow, no actually green. Not that green (before she picked up the pink jar of paint, but then decided to return it to the paint tray). I don’t know which painting. I painting yellow. Look, I draw a letter (an L). Down. This my only color I want. I want no color because I like yellow."

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Isabelle and Seon painted side by side for quite a while and shared the materials with ease. To close today's blog, here's a quick snippet of them in action!