Blog Archives

Paint Mixing and Printmaking

12/13/2022

Recently, children have explored paint mixing processes and created their own personal palettes that represent colors they enjoy. These personal palettes have since been used for printmaking in the classroom.

Exploring color through the experience of mixing paint is something that children have participated in for years. During these experiences, we often utilize resources such as a color wheel to support our learning and understanding of the transformation process. We also intentionally incorporate vocabulary related to the work into our discussions and observations as we test, experiment, and discover.
We are able to observe how past experiences and their ever expanding knowledge of color theory supports the complexity of the work this year in Tucker Room.

Creating palettes inspired by ourselves

Cate mixes colors to create a palette that represents the colors of her outfit.

Saul's first palette was also inspired by his clothing.

Creating palettes based on personal preferences

Frances creates a palette that represents her vision of "beautiful colors".

To create purple, Frannie referred to the color wheel to determine that she would need a combination of blue and red to begin.

I love this color.
I did red, and blue, but it's a little bit of purple that I can't see (too dark).
I should change it with more red and blue.
And I need to change it lighter. So white. - Frannie

Before beginning the mixing process, Frannie browsed paint samples to find colors that she felt best represented some of her favorites.
All beautiful colors. - Frances

Frances felt confident mixing a variety of pink hues which she has created many times in the past.
Pink is just easy because it's red and white.
I put a lot of red... and less white.

Frannie noted the transformation of color as she experimented with varying amounts of red and white paint.
I think I need a little more white because it's too red.
Yep (mixing in additional white paint),
I see the pink coming in! It's getting the color I want.

Our work and decision making process is also often inspired by each other

Which palette do you feel best represents your child? Did you guess correctly?

Printmaking

Since mixing our own paint palettes, we have explored a few different types of printmaking techniques and have had the opportunity to incorporate and utilize our paints into this work.

Dendritic Printing

Symmetrical Prints

Monoprints

Here are just a few examples of the MANY prints made over the past few days.

The children have very thoughtfully decided that these gorgeous prints would make the perfect surprise gifts for their family members.

When you receive your gift in the near future, we hope that you can talk to your child about their process and the work that went into its creation!

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Dream Homes

12/8/2022

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A dream house is a home for dreams. - Wilder

After constructing a guest house for Shelly’s visitors, children continued to express interest in home design.
Ideas began to subtly shift from practical home furnishings and necessities to imaginative concepts and idea sharing.

The idea of imagining our "dream houses" emerged during whole group conversations about where this interest in constructing a home might take us.

What is a dream house?
Like what you dream of being your house. You can put anything in. - Remy
We can make our dreams come true. - Finlay
So we can look at them for real life. - Luke
We use our imagination. You think in your imagination. - Hugh
And use your mind. - Jade
(and) your brain. - Frannie

What would you include in your dream home?
Remy: A bounce room.
Finlay: A candy store with a pikachu made out of gummy bears.
Wilder: I would have a parrot in my house.
Luke: I would have a pet owl.
Frannie: I would have a unicorn pet and she would sleep in her own bed that's bouncy and has fur and there’s a little slide to go down.
Jade: (I would have) a snake. With a bed that's bouncy.
Michael: I have a bed in my house. And stairs. And a slide.
Wilder: To get into my house there would be a slide and a tunnel and a pet parrot. The house would be painted green to blend in (with surroundings).
Lily: I want a caterpillar pet and a chocolate milk fountain in the kitchen.
Luke: A dreamer. To see my dreams.

Particularly this school year, children have developed an understanding of the importance of brainstorming, discussion, and planning before diving into project work.

When there is a collective interest among the group, we also read lots of literature connected to the interest that we share together. These books often provide inspiration and influence the projection of the work.

Here are a few of the examples of books that we currently have around the classroom and have supported our research so far.

When reading Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty we talked about the important role of an architect when planning the construction of a home.

What is an architect and what do they do?
Capers: A kind of construction man. A builder. Drawing his design.
Wilder: Someone who paints.
What is a design?
Saul: He draws what he wants to build.
Hugh: Drawing the thing that he wants to build so he knows how to build.
Cape: To make directions.
Finlay: Step by step by step by step.
Luke: Like a map to build.
Lily: Like drawing a model.

Drafting a design of our intended creation can be very helpful and often necessary. As Capers described, it helps give "directions" and is an important step in the planning process.

The idea of a "blueprint" has also been introduced during our research process.
Jack and his mom shared their own blueprints for the renovations that will be taking place soon at their "Hana House" in Hawaii.

First drafts of children's original dream home ideas:

Shifting from an individual approach,
to a desire to collaborate

After sharing some of their original drafts and ideas with one another, it was observed that many children shared similar interests for their dream homes. Some children then began expressing an interest in collaborating with one another when moving forward with their work.

In addition to sharing similar ideas and preferences about their homes, it was also communicated that designing a house on your own is quite difficult!

If you have to draw something you want it's hard! - Hugh
If you have a dream that is so good, but it's impossible to build. - Wilder

Perhaps this is one of the main reasons why collaborating, combining our ideas, and working together on this project was so appealing to many.

You can work together. - Hugh
And finish it faster. - Cate
How about we work together? I help Cate and she helps me. - Luke
Since it's your dream, it (the house) can have 100 rooms for 100 people. - Hugh

We can connect! - Luke
Let's connect all of our own houses together. - Remy

Like the connected barn!
(Wilder references a type of home in a book we read together while researching different home designs)
And then we can just walk, walk, walk, to our playdates. Hugh, do you want to make a connected house?
If everyone wants to make the same thing, but they are all connected, so someone can work on one thing and someone else works on a different part! - Wilder

This week, we have fully embraced this idea of connection and working together.
We are beginning to divide the work into small group team projects based on our shared interests and home design preferences.
We will continue to keep you updated on this exciting project moving forward!

For now, here is a brief summary of the work so far according to Wilder, Frannie, and Lucas:

We're building a dream house. We're connecting all of our dream houses together. The connected house. We're making a connected house and it was my idea and we found it in a book that said houses here are so big and connected. - Wilder

We made rooms, like the flying room and the bouncy room. And there's other kinds of rooms and I don't remember them. Then we're gonna build the rooms. We can use blocks. - Frannie

We made the drafts to see what ones we like to make the dream house. Me and Hugh and Lucas and Jade and Michael are working on a race car track for the connected house. - Wilder

First we drawed the drafts of our houses to make the dream house, now we are making the model of the race car track to get people to stops. So it has a lot of race cars connected so it can be super fast. Then we're gonna build the whole house and I wanna help make that video game room. That's my favorite. - Lucas

WORK IN PROGRESS
Constructing a model of the race car train track that will help transport everyone throughout the connected house.

construction progress day 1

construction progress day 2

If you'd like to get involved in supporting this work moving forward, please refer to yesterday's email sent out to all families titled "Dream House Project Work".
Thank you to everyone. We truly appreciate your collaboration!

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December 02nd, 2022

12/2/2022

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This week we got to celebrate our friend Jade's 5th birthday!

When we were thinking about Jade's preferences and her favorite things, our ideas immediately went to her lovie, Auz.

Auzzie! Maybe we can ask if she could bring him. - Cape
Maybe there can be monkeys because Auz is a monkey. - Frannie
Real monkeys? - Cape
We could draw them. They could swing. Maybe we could have a rope and they could zip-line across the classroom. - Frannie

Strong and competent monkey bodies

While drawing their monkeys, Frannie and Luke thoughtfully considered details about them in order to give them personalities, movement and a connection to home and family. After drawing a couple drafts, Frannie and Luke added fur pieces and details to their monkeys, including eyes, mustaches and expressive tails.

I'm making arms. They are connecting to branches. - Luke, considering the body position of his monkey, intending for him to be able to swing
It (the tail) needs to be curled up so it can hang on. - Frannie

Monkeys have tails like my kitty (lovie).
I'm gonna attach them together because it's a baby and a mama. - Frannie, wishes for her monkey to have a family

Tita is gonna wonder why I have fur on my body. - Frannie, noticing pieces of fur on her shirts after cutting

(drawing ears) So it can hear everything in the whole wide world. My monkey can only hear things in Washington DC. And I think Lukie's can hear everything even from France because the ears are gigantic. - Frannie, sharing her theory of the ear size of the monkey being connected to the monkey's ability to hear, factoring in distance

Hi, my name is Mr. Monkey - Luke

This is sparkles and her nickname is spark. - Frannie

Lukie discovered that it looks like he has a tail when he attached a piece of wire fur to the chair he was sitting in. They decided to include that technique in their birthday decorations for Jade's chair.

WHISK
It's a mixer like for pancakes. - Luke

For Jade's favorite meal we made Chicken Tenders and breaded our chicken, using flour, eggs, breadcrumbs and salt, before baking it in the oven.

Luke's grocery list

How do you bread chicken?

We dip it in flour, then you dip it in the eggs and then dip it in the mix and put it in oven. - Frannie

Flip it and flip it and put it in the eggs. - Luke

Frannie's grocery list

Our cooking required a multi-step process, sequencing and careful handling of the ingredients (e.g. cracking and whisking eggs).

That's raw (chicken). You can't eat it because you get a tummy ache. We need to cook it and we need to go wash our hands because all of this is raw. Even the eggs. This is a chicken egg. The chicken is gonna go first in the flour. - Luke

It feels massage-ey. - Frannie, rubbing the breadcrumbs between her fingers

These are all muscles (pointing to the chicken tenders). I love muscles. - Luke
How did you know that? - Ines
My brain told me. - Luke

It's so fun, Luke, right? - Frannie
Yes! Because it's so blobby. - Luke
It's gonna be so good when we cook it. The breadcrumbs will make
it really good. - Frannie
It makes it super crunchy. It smells so good. The eggs and
the breadcrumbs and the chicken. - Luke

After baking our chicken, we mixed Jade's "special sauce" using ketchup and mayonnaise.

Jade told us we would know when the sauce is done when it would reach a certain color ("The color of Auz's zipper" - Jade). To support our work, she mixed the desired color with paint for us.

This is the color for the sauce. - Luke
It doesn't have to be exactly like it. It's always different. - Jade

It looks like yoghurt. - Frannie
It looks like blood to me. - Luke
I do this. It looks like this color when I mix tomato sauce and sour cream. - Frannie

Today we got to celebrate our friend Jade together with her mom and dad. Her dad, Tim, read a great story about a dragon that likes to be a vegetarian. Many of us tried Jade's special sauce for the first time and we LOVED it!
"Wow, I actually like it. I like it, Jade. Can we have more sauce?" - Finlay

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TUCKER ROOM

Paint Mixing and Printmaking

Creating palettes inspired by ourselves

Creating palettes based on personal preferences

Our work and decision making process is also often inspired by each other

Printmaking

Dendritic Printing

Symmetrical Prints

Monoprints

Dream Homes

A dream house is a home for dreams. - Wilder

Shifting from an individual approach, ​to a desire to collaborate

December 02nd, 2022

Archives

Shifting from an individual approach,
to a desire to collaborate