Imagine

What a lovely day for a family picnic, a bit of entertainment and some garden planting! Thank you to everyone that participated. It was a truly great day!

     Since the beginning of the year we have been exploring the world of insects. Our class has been observing them, reading books about them, and drawing and sculpting them. We have been very busy in the last month learning an insect song to perform for our Spring celebration. Along with learning the song, each child chose an insect to represent and created a head band that reflected that representation. Each had the opportunity to closely observe the head of their particular insect. They noticed shapes, colors and details that were unique to each insect.       One of the books we read about insects was focused on where insects live. This gave us the opportunity to talk about habitats and homes. We asked the question,“Where does your insect live?” We set out to find out a little about where each of their insects live. Along the way, we started a few different class discussions about weather and climate, and reasons living things need some type of she...

For our Spring celebration we decided to sing the song “going buggy”. We typically create some kind of costume to go along with the song or play we have chosen to perform. This year we set out to make insect head bands. The  first step after choosing what insect we wanted to be was to take a very close look at the details of our insects head. What shape is it’s head? Are the antenna above or below it’s eyes? This gave us a great opportunity to really focus on details and talk about things like the reason a butterfly has that funny spiral like thing on its face. We learned it’s called a proboscis and that the butterfly uses it for feeding.  The head bands themselves are made out of newspaper that each child painted. The rest of the details were constructed with egg cartons, construction paper, chenille sticks and glue.

We invited the children to show us what they know about insects using clay and other loose parts. Clay is a great medium for so many reason. It’s malleable for one, which allows the children to make changes to their creations while they are working.  One dimensional drawings are more challenging when trying to capture the essence of a living thing or anything that isn’t flat for that matter. Working in a three dimensional medium like clay can have its own frustrations but ultimately with perseverance a child can have much “success” creating something they feel looks like what they are trying to create.  As with the drawings some of the children were very specific about what kind of insect they were making right from the start. There was care for some that went into detail like the way wings sit on the body of a fly.  Others molded and shaped until the specific insect appeared, while others just made an “insect”.  Look for these awesome creations on the windowsill in ...

Children show us what they know by expressing themselves through many different mediums. Art is one of those mediums.  We asked the children if they can draw an insect. We asked,  “What parts would you need to draw in order for the viewer to know its an insect?” We found that the children had a pretty good understanding of the basic parts of an insect, their number of legs, wings,  etc.  Some  of the children drew very specific insects while others drew  insects that were more generic. Some paid careful attention to the realistic colors their insects were. Some wanted their insects to be their favorite colors . We even had a few “rainbow” colored insects.  Look for these lovely drawings in the red room under the big windows. 

We used a piece of yarn as another tool to help the children better understand symmetry. The yarn became incorporated in a different type of loose parts composition. It really seemed to help those having a hard time with the concept see it in a different way.  Most of our friends were able to create a mirror image composition.  The end results were really beautiful to look at and the children had so much fun making them.

We set up a provocation that invited the children to make insects using loose parts.  We counted body parts and legs to ensure we had the right amount. Some children added other parts to their insect like a stinger, antennas or wings.  While creating their insects we asked if anyone had noticed that insects where the same on both sides. Most hadn’t noticed but this lead into a discussion about symmetry.  We read a few books about symmetry and talked about symmetry in nature. Everyone was surprised to see how many things were symmetrical, even their own body! We used a mirror to help the children better understand by creating a clear visual.