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“Nobody has actually seen it because the Loch Ness monster is a little shy. “ - Giacomo, 4.1 years Yesterday, while we were discussing how some water had disappeared from our paper and water experiments, Giacomo began describing the process of evaporation (blog to come soon). At the end of his description, he shared this: “That’s just because Rose told me all about those things. And there was this one time when Rose told me about the Loch Ness monster that’s alive and in the lake.” - Giacomo, 4.1 years She told you the story of the Loch Ness monster? “Yeah, it’s just one of the pictures was just fake. It was drawed. It was drawed with some materials like…" - Giacomo
The illustration sparked the following conversation: In Scotland they call this a water kelpie. - Elyse “Well, so mommy’s Loch Ness monster was a water creature. It had flippers.” - Giacomo Maybe there are different types of… - Elyse “Loch Ness Monsters.” - Giacomo I think that the folk tale is that there are a few different kinds. - Elyse This is a book of folk and fairy tales, so stories like Giacomo was saying, may not always true, but they’re really interesting and fun to read. - Elyse “Yeah, the loch ness monster has a long neck.” - Giacomo He does. I’ve seen a lot of different drawings of him. Giacomo, maybe we could think one day about creating our own imagine of the Loch Ness monster. - Elyse “Nobody has actually seen it because the Loch Ness monster is a little shy. “ - Giacomo Giacomo, I’m wondering if one day we could look at some different images of what other people think the Loch Ness monster looks like, and then we could create our own. - Elyse “Well, there’s a lot of things he had. Daddy thinks the Loch Ness monster is nice, but I don’t even believe in that.” - Giacomo Well, we don’t have to believe in him to create our own image (i.e. he doesn’t have to be real for us to imagine). We might have to do some research before we can draw. him. - Elyse What do you do with a tail like this?
One-on-one conversation
 Saul and Audrey said goodbye, and Giacomo continued to share his ideas and insight about the Loch Ness Monster (and other things). “I don’t know what they [Loch Ness Monsters] eat. I think they eat kelp off fishes. I don’t know what the Loch Ness monster of the lake is because there used to be such thing as a whale monster. On one eye it had a small eye, and on one side it had a big eye. IT was bigger than the gray/blue humpback whale.” - Giacomo The Loch Ness monster was bigger than the gray/blue humpback whale? - Elyse “Yeah, yeah.” - Giacomo How do we know that? - Elyse “Well, I knew it because I thought the Loch Ness monster was dead, but that’s how I knew it wasn’t alive. It used to live in the monster world, where everything is just monster stuff because their world fell because there was too many dinosaurs, and the earth couldn’t hold that many dinosaurs, so it just fell. But some of the monsters escaped, like the loch ness monster, some of them escaped, but not so many. So, they actually didn’t have like the hole on their back to spray out the water they swallow because they actually eat clean water.” - Giacomo The Loch Ness monster eats clean water? “No, no. The whale monster. They lived in the dinosaur and monster world, but they fell.” - Giacomo How did it fall? “Well, it failed because there was too much weight on the earth, so it just fell.” - Giacomo What happened to the Loch Ness Monster? - Elyse “Some of them escaped into space, but a new earth with people in it came around, and then people comed here from monkeys and chimpanzees and other guys and cave men. All those in a long, long, long, long, long time turned into humans. And then, they started their life.” - Giacomo Giacomo, do you know what the word is for that? - Elyse “No.” - Giacomo Have you ever heard a word that describes that whole process? - Elyse “No.” - Giacomo I think the word for that is ‘evolution’. - Elyse “No, evolution is just for like water that floats up and then it rains and then it goes into the dark and into a lake and keeps going around and around.” - Giacomo That word is very similar. The word for the water process you’re describing is ‘evaporation’. - Elyse “But this word is a little bit longer than it, so I might want to turn this [zoom] off.” - Giacomo Before you go, can I say thank you for sharing all of your ideas with me? - Elyse Also, in case anyone is unsure of the difference between folk and fairy tales (as I was), I found this simple explanation:
Folk tales are the traditional beliefs, practices, lessons, legends and tales of a culture or of a people passed down orally through stories. Fairy tales are fanciful and imaginary stories about people, fairies, animals or things who have magical powers. On Monday we began an exploration of paper and water. Today, we revisited this work. We observed what some of the papers from Monday looked like after soaking, added new materials and tools to our work, and Audrey made some soup with her paper, water, and ribbon. Giacomo and Tegan also engaged in a discussion about the composition of paper.
Giacomo describes the water cycle for us after observing that some of his water has disappeared from the container. “Oh, it just went in the sky.” - Giacomo, 4.1 years How did it do that? “Well, you know, when water stays in a place for a really long day or really long time like a few minutes or like night and morning, it then like kind of goes up. And when it goes up, it rains and goes into the ground, and then it goes into a lake or a pool or anything that has a lot of water, and then it goes up again, and then it rains down the grain again. Then it flows into water and rains into water and then goes into um..” - Giacomo, 4.1 years
What are the ingredients in paper?This paper right here is watercolor paper that I watercolored on, and it’s not falling apart at all. “Because it needs more time to get apart. It needs more time than other paper to get apart. Because watercolor paper has more heaviness inside of it, and the heaviness is more like likeness inside that. But heaviness makes it harder. So that’s why it takes more time to come apart. Yeah, because heavy like stone makes it more hard because stone Is hard in paper, and that’s how it takes days to come apart.” - Giacomo Giacomo, do you think there are stones in our paper? “No, it’s tiny stones, but inside the tiny stones are meteor stones, and the meteor stones are big stones.” -Giacomo “Trees make p aper! They just come from trees.” - Giacomo Are all of the papers made from the same ingredients? - Sarah, Audrey's mom “No.” - Audrey “I think that watercolor paper doesn’t get crushed down so easily because they made it thicker because watercolors are very watery. If you try to paint with watercolors on plain paper it might fall apart.” - Tegan, 7.4 years I’m wondering if we can find out what the ingredient is that makes it thicker and heavier. “Mostly just the chemicals and some other things. Well, there’s a lot of paper that has a lot of different things. Fire paper. Book paper which is on books. Oh, and picture paper, which is on pictures. And head paper, which is on heads. And lots of other papers. We have a lot of kinds. Normal paper, and different types of like watercolor paper. We have a lot of papers. We have like five billion things in our attic.” - Giacomo Noodle [paper and ribbon] Soup
Disintegration“Elyse, maybe it would take like five million days to make it apart. Five million days is how long it needs for all of it to be destroyed into small pieces.” - Giacomo That’s a long time. - Elyse “Well, it will actually take ten days.” - Giacomo This paper right here is watercolor paper that I watercolored on, and it’s not falling apart at all. - Elyse “Because it needs more time to get apart. It needs more time than other paper to get apart.” - Giacomo Saying good morning!
I notice that I’m having a hard time finding Sylvie today. Where did she go? She’s hiding from us! And it looks like your head covering matches your pants. “Yeah. I have a pink towel.” - Sylvie Sylvie, while we’re waiting, I wanted to show you that I was taking notes with the pen that you gave me! Thank you! [Katie gave Sylvie her pen] We match! “Hey! Elyse! I think we are pen twins!” - Sylvie I didn’t know until I opened it that it smells good. “I know! I know. What if…we could write at the same time with our same pens.” - Sylvie
Do you remember what we’re going to do together today? “Yeah. Draw.” - Sylvie “We can draw the computer even.” - Sylvie We are. We’re going to do some more digital drawing. “Can I draw with you? I like to push the button in two different colors.” - Saul “I want to draw a turtle.” - Sylvie “Maybe we can draw a little bit of different colors and then keep watching the big forklift with the little forklift if you want.” - Saul Sometimes we need to clear the screen so that there is more space to draw. Before we do this, we have to all agree that it is okay to erase the work. Luckily, we are able to save it. I want to spell ‘Astra’.” - Audrey You did it, that’s how you spell ‘Astra’.” -Sarah Audrey, what does that word mean to you? What is Astra? “Superwings. It’s a super wings.” - Audrey “She’s a character from super wings that can go to outer space.” - Tegan “Elyse there’s your symbol!” - Saul It sounds like Saul and Audrey want to clear it. Sylvie, do you agree to that? “Yes.” - Sylvie Another way we could do this is to divide the screen and you can each have your own space. “Yes!” - Audrey It means that I have to draw some lines. There’s three of you guys, so we need three spaces on the screen. I’m going to draw a line here, here, and here. An “S” for Sylvie, an “A” for Audrey, and the green lines are for Sauly!  Respecting everyone's opinion and input“Can we read that same pencil book?” - Sylvie We can in just a minute. “Sometimes I want you to read when I’m working on drawing sometimes because I can focus sometimes.” - Sylvie I can read. “Okay!” - Sylvie Should I read while we draw? “Well, I’m a little tired of drawing. Sometimes I like to rest while you are reading a book.” - Sylvie Should I leave the drawing screen up or should we pause the drawing? “You can pause the drawing screen so I can really see the book.” - Sylvie “Yes.” - Audrey Saul, do you agree with that choice? “No, We can watch the forklift video.” - Saul We will watch it after. Well, it seems like we all agree to pause the drawing screen. “I like getting rid of everything page.” - Saul You like that page? And we can do that when we draw on the screen too. We can just get rid of everything.
We’re going to do a quick sleeping bunnies, and Sylvie’s idea was to be sleeping computers. What are they going to do when they wake up? “They’re going to print.” - Sylvie What are they going to print? “Hearts out.” - Sylvie Saul, do you have one? “Maybe I can show you the forklift video with daddy and mommy.” - Saul “I want to do foals.” - Audrey “What’s that?” - Sylvie “A foal is a baby horse.” - Audrey What are they going to do when they wake up? “They are going to say ‘nay’ or they gallop.” - Audrey Saul, do you have an idea for sleeping bunnies? “Yeah, they hop.” - Saul
“I’m drawing Elyse! I’m drawing!” - Saul, 3.5 years Finding a platform for us to do a collaborative, digital drawing experience was inspired by Audrey's love for using the digital drawing feature of Seesaw, our interactive platform for sharing photos, videos, and our work. With a little help from Jen, we found a way to do this through the Zoom app!
Most of the dialogue during this call was about navigating the features of our digital drawing program. There was also a lot of silence during this call because everyone was so busy working on the collaborative drawing.
Here are some samples of the work that we did together. At times, you will notice that you can see a gray box with a name, which pops next to an individual's drawing as they work.
Our favorite way to end our calls each day is to do "Sleeping Bunnies". With each passing day we are getting more and more creative. Sleeping BunniesSylvie had expressed interest in being “sleeping computers” for the end of our call. Alright, so we’re going to be sleeping computers, but what are they going to do when they wake up? “They’re going to do the same thing we were doing today!” - Sylvie They’re going to draw? “Yeah, they’re going to draw on themselves.” - Sylvie Quick question though. You wouldn’t actually draw on yourself would you? “No, but in one of my books I saw someone draw on their face? With a red marker.” - Sylvie That is so silly. I do not recommend that. “Do you know that bunny Max and Ruby? Max is so little that even did that. He drawed on his face.” - Sylvie But you wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t draw on yourselves? “Yeah only if I was a baby.” - Sylvie [Giacomo leans into the computer, puts his hand to his mouth and said:] “Sometimes I draw on myself. It’s not a lot. Just some tiny marks and stuff. Sometimes on my hands. Like watercolors last night” - Giacomo Giacomo, you made it sound like a secret because you were whispering like this.
Audrey and Tegan spend time drawing after our call
Person with house; Dog with house
I heard you were drawing with Tegan yesterday. What were you drawing? “Puppies. Only one puppy.” - Audrey Were you drawing together? “Yeah! Mommy has a photo of it on her phone.” - Audrey She drew it on paper after. - Sarah Hello to everybody! We're so glad to see you! Sylvie is great at reminding us to sing the "Good morning song!" Today, we had a lot of people to say hello to: Bobby (Sylvie's grandmother), Giacomo, Audrey and Tegan, Rainey Room B, and Saul!
"I don't know if you know this one, it's called Claris." - Sylvie, 4.0 years
Our virtual friends brought their messages for Sylvie that we made earlier this week.
 Rainey Room B is planning an on-campus birthday celebration for Sylvie as well. Sylvie asked if she could wear the cape that day! I know that her Rainey Room A and B friends are excited to celebrate with her when the time comes! Happy Birthday dear Sylvie! You are so loved and cherished! Happy Birthday Elyse
To everyone who sent me flowers, messages, and joined us on Zoom, thank you so much for celebrating with me. I am so grateful for my entire St. John's family. It is so special to me that I get to "do life" with you all. I love each of you, and appreciate your continuous kindness, support, and love.
Why don’t we pause with the books. Sylvie, can you remind me what it is we’re supposed to do at the end of Zoom today? “I still remember. Sleeping dancers? Oh, and I think I still remember what they’re doing…what they do when they wake up. They dance.” - Sylvie, 4.0 years Okay, so sleeping dancers are going to dance when they wake up. Is that right? “Yeah!” - Saul, 3.5 years “I looked at you, but I didn’t dance cause I didn’t like dancing.” - Saul [he was moving his legs] Saul, do you have an idea? “Hop.” - Saul We’re going to hop when we wake up, but are we going to be something? “Yeah. A rabbit. You can be a rabbit.” - Saul
Giacomo, is there something you’d like to be? “This is going to be very hard, and I don’t think you can do it. The universe.” -Giacomo, 4.1 years We’re going to be the whole universe? “Yeah, the universe is big; can be big. Nothing is bigger than the universe.” - Giacomo That’s true. So, if we pretend to be sleeping universes, what will we do when we wake up? “Well, float.” - Giacomo How are you going to float? “I can show you. You just stay with your arms like that [out to the side].’ - Giacomo
We love to see our siblings and St. John's alumni! We frequently see Tegan, Audrey's big sister. Today, we got to see Rose, Giacomo's big sister again. AND it was her birthday! Of course, we had to sing "Happy Birthday"! We hope it was a great day for you Rose!
A few photos that may have been hard to see on the documents! |
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