Today we received a fun surprise! Lucia was going to be joining us for story time! Yesterday, Saul and I set a goal for ourselves. We wanted to read five stories today, which was more than we've ever read during story time! We had a mixture of truck books, some mythology, and even a silly monster!
“Why do they put this on? That little circle?” - Lucia This one says it’s a Caldecott Honor book, which means it almost won for illustrations. Lucia wants to know why there are silver circles on our books. “Well, somebody put the silver circles on the book and they made them flat.” - Saul Yes, and the silver circles mean something. They are part of an award you can win for illustrations. It means that this book didn’t win for best illustrations, but the people liked their illustrations. - Elyse Pajama Design Reveal“Ours [RRB] is this one!” - Lucia
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Today we experimented with watercolors (a favorite language for both of us) and oil pastels . Would they mix? If yes, how? If no, why not? How do these materials work together? “I brought all of my materials right now. I’m going to start to work, and you will organize your materials.” - Saul
The watercolor won’t stick to the oil pastel lines? - Elyse “Oh, it keeps moving around. Maybe it’s just silly watercolors. Why don’t you use oil pastels to make it not move.” - Saul You can use oil pastels to keep your watercolors in place. It’s called resistance. - Elyse “I made it [oil pastel] a little bit wet to make the watercolor still and not move.” - Saul A little bit of water does change the texture. - Elyse “That’s what we’re trying. I really want to draw with the side [of the oil pastel].” - Saul “I’m taking the paper from the oil pastel because it makes it easier to draw.” - Saul Looking at other artists who have drawn fire with oil pastelsA framed image“I thought you might make a rainbow fire. A fire rainbow. You have to use the oil pastel to make the fire.” - Saul
Is there fire on top of the rainbow? - Elyse “Yeah. Don’t forget that we have to make a fire picture, but we can’t feel it because it’s flat. Fire pictures are flat.” - Saul “We have to make the frame of the picture because it’s a picture of fire. We can’t even feel the fire because we’re drawing it.” - Saul [There was a gap in his frame] “There’s only one more oil pastel to add.” - Saul “I made my frame. Now I’m going to put inside all of the paper to make the fire. Don’t forget the little pieces. It’s a picture of a fire! The paper was the fire. It’s a hot picture.” - Saul [started dropping the oil pastel papers into the middle] One of the many goals of the Brown Room year is to explore new tools, techniques...languages. Recently, I realized that we had never used oil pastels together, and there are so many wonderful possibilities for them. Personally, my favorite technique is to blend them, but as we discovered, there are quite a few things you can do with watercolors to represent your imaginative ideas. “I brought my pastel colors. I counted them and they are twenty.” Sauly, one thing we can do with oil pastels is blend them. - Elyse “Blend them? In a blender.” - Saul “Red really, really, really works.” - Saul It is very bold. Very bright. - Elyse “Everywhere I go, the red goes. I’m making a volcano. Now I’m drawing a volcano. I don’t know if volcanoes are good enough fire. Fire is most in a dragon. The fire that is coming out of the volcano is fire, fire. I don’t know if a dragon is going to be a fire measure. I don’t know if the volcano is enough red. I’m drawing it all over my paper.” - Saul Is all of that red the fire from the volcano? - Elyse “No, even more is hiding inside of the pastel.” - Saul “I’m making it all over the place fire. It’s not exploding. Now the fire is turning itself into one big house.” - Saul “I’m making all of the fire from the volcano. The fire stopped shooting. It took a rest.” - Saul I think I’m going to add a sun to my volcano. - Elyse “Why? To make it more dry? ‘ - Saul Well, I was hoping to blend my orange and yellow. My favorite thing to do with oil pastels is to blend them. - Elyse “I don’t like to blend them, I like to make them into fire.” - Saul The Sun“Well, I don’t know about his yellow sun, but yellow suns do not have any time so I turned it in to a blue sun. They don’t have any time to turn into a yellow sun. They have to turn into a blue sun.” - Saul Sauly, how does time change the color? - Elyse “Well, I made a rainbow.” - Saul Can you tell me more about how time changes the color? - Elyse “The blue is making the sun. It’s turning the fire into sun.” - Saul How do you make fire into a sun? - Elyse “You add yellow to it. This is the sun! Look! Look at the sun! I know the sun because you can’t eat the sun because it’s just a picture of the sun.” - Saul Could you eat the real sun? - Elyse “Noooo…it’s not the real sun. It’s just the picture of the sun. You can’t eat sun.” - Saul Can you imagine how hot it would be? - Elyse “It would be hot in your mouth.” - Saul “I made two pictures on the one piece of paper. One is called the sun and one is called the fire. The fire is under the sun. Now you can’t see it because it disappeared. You can even draw on the back [bottom] of the pastel.” - Saul [top right photo he is showing both sides] Black PaperSwitching to black paper really altered the way the colors popped from the paper.
What does our invitation need to say? Have you ever gotten a birthday invitation where somebody says, ‘Will you please come to my birthday?’? - Elyse “I didn’t have a birthday invitation.” - Jade So, if we want to ask somebody to do something with us, how can we ask them? If I wanted to invite you to the park I might say, ‘Sauly, will you come to the park with me?’. - Elyse “Of course I will.” - Saul That’s an invitation, so how can we invite Brown Room? - Elyse ‘You can come in. You need to say ‘Come in when you’re ready. When you’re not ready you can’t come in.’. - Jade “We need XOXOX, XOXOX.” - Jade Should our message say XOXOX like ‘kiss hug kiss hug kiss’? - Elyse “Yes.” - Jade If we only ask ‘Are you coming?’, do they know what we’re inviting them to do? - Elyse “No. You need to think about it, and you need to think about it and Saul. You need to think about if they are coming.” - Jade I think we need to let them know what they’re coming to. - Elyse “They’re coming to a place to do snack. You need to say, ‘Are you coming? Say yes or no.’” - Jade
Monsters and TrucksWe ended our call with a new monster book, who is taken apart to create a new scene; it's a new way to think about collage and deconstruction. We also read a new construction book that the Brown Room let us borrow. It has these incredibly cool and beautiful pages where you use a flashlight to show a hidden image!
On Thursday we had a mice filled story time as we read three of Ellen Still Walsh's books: Mouse Paint, Mouse Count, and Balancing Act. We also read a story based on a Scottish folk song called Always Room for One More, and we ended with one of Saul's favorites, Today is Monday.
Mixing Green and orange“I’ve got the big paper ready! I’m ready to do all of my things.” - Saul “Alright, now I’m making toad.” - Saul Maybe I’ll paint Toad within my grass. - Elyse “I’m painting grass too!” - Jade “I’m making the dinosaur bigger and bigger and bigger. I’m getting him out of the dragon. He’s coming from a different place.” - Saul [spreading paint with a paintbrush in one hand and using the palm of his other hand]
“I’m making the same as Saul. I’m making a Sauly orange Loch Ness Monster.” - Jade You know what we learned about him? We don’t know what he really looks like, so we can make it up. He can be whatever color we want him to be. - Elyse “Well, I saw one in the night, but the one I saw was mean. Well, was he nice or mean? No, he’s mean. I want to make teeth on him. Is it a boy or a girl?” - Jade “Look! I’m making a really big dinosaur. I'm making the scales on a dinosaur. The scales.” - Saul “I'm making a monster that is a dinosaur. I’m making a scale [too].” - Jade “I put the scales on the dragon.” - Saul Do you think my Loch Ness monster needs scales? - Elyse “Yes because monsters and dinosaurs always have scales.” - Jade I think I’ll try blue scales. - Elyse “Good. It might show up.” - Jade “Now I’m making purple. Red with blue!!” - Saul “I’m making a maze where there’s mean monsters.” - Jade Tuesday was an extra special day for me and Saul. We finally got to play together, in-person. We met up at a favorite spot of Saul's in Rock Creek Park. We spent two glorious hours digging in the dirt, collecting flowers and grass, making collections, running around, and just enjoying each other's company!
Another wonderful thing about having Jade is that she can share with us a bit of what has been happening in the Brown Room! What have you been working on in the Brown Room? - Elyse “Jumping.” - Jade, 3.5 months Something that we know about is the dragon costume.- Elyse “Elyse, can I think it home for another little while.” - Saul, 3.8 months Maybe you can tell Jade about the dragon scale you made. I’m wondering if Jade made a dragon scale. - Elyse “Jade didn’t make the dragon costume?” -Saul Let’s ask her. Did you help make the dragon costume? - Elyse “Yes. It’s orange and white and black.” - Jade A snack invitation for Brown RoomThe Brown Room has invited Saul to have snack with them a few times, and we'd like to return the favor. We've chatted briefly about inviting them, how we should do it, but Jade gave us the entire break down of what we will need to create and send an invitation. If we want to invite them, how would we send them an invitation or a message? - Elyse “I do not know.” - Saul Oh, so that means we need to think about it and share ideas. - Elyse “You get a piece of paper out. Put everybody’s name on it; the kids and the teachers, and then you put it in an envelope. Well, put it on a piece of paper and then put it in the envelope. Then send it to us. Okay? Put the kids on it; their names on it.” - Jade All of the children’s names, or maybe their symbols. - Elyse “Yeah!” - Saul “Then you put the names on the out of the envelope, then put a stamp on it and send it to us.” - Jade Sharing Stuffed Animals
Sleeping BunniesSaul's Favorite Truck Book
This week, we added a little complexity and interaction to our story time. We started by reading a myth. Our final three books were about lines and shapes that inspired some drawing as we read. When we finished Lines that Wiggle, we decided to revisit a few favorites. Did you have a favorite kind of line from the book? - Elyse “Yeah, the octopus one.” - Saul “My favorite was the octopus too.” - Lucia Did you have another favorite line? - Elyse “The straight ones.” - Saul
Shapes“I’m making really small pictures.” - Lucia Lucia! It was so wonderful to have us with you this week! Thank you for joining us, and we hope to see you on campus soon!
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