Imagine

Halloween is the best time to talk about real vs pretend. Halloween has its origins but for small children it’s about dressing up and pretending to be something you are not. There are images during this holiday season that might be confusing and scary for our littles. That’s why around this time we always find ourselves provoking similar conversations.   We asked the children    what do you think is spooky? The children had a very long list from monsters to ghosts, zombies to goblins. They pretty much covered them all. It’s hard to protect our children from these images during this season they are literally everywhere. So it’s important to reassure them that all this spooky stuff is pretend...and as kids know best, pretending is fun!  We asked the children to draw the things they find scary and it was interesting to watch and listen to them as their artwork developed into stories and expressed some real fears. These are a few of some of the things our friends said, “I drew the dark. I’

Exploring lines and shapes has led us to the circle. One of our friends pointed out that a circle is a line that curves. We also realized that when two ends of a curved line meet it makes a circle. Lines that are straight that connect  make the letter A or any of the straight line letters. Lines that curve help us make the rest. This is the foundation we lay .  We explored this through different mediums to help develop all the skills needed for future writing and reading.    We traced  circles using our overhead projector and used brightly colored pastels to fill “inside” the circle. The next day we colored “outside” of the circles. Some of our friends traced circles of different sizes on the back of some of our previously painted artwork to create a wall of circles. Our dot wall keeps growing!  Paint and paint brushes were used to free hand all these beautiful circles. When it was dry the children used a different color to go around each circle providing more opportunity to develop th

Lines are the foundation for all form and shape. A line on a piece of paper becomes a tree, the bones in our body the side of a building. Lines on paper become a triangle, a triangle becomes an A. Lines are the beginning of all structure . This is why at the beginning of every year we start here. Basic understanding of lines and the hand eye coordination it takes to create a line is fundamental to all art and all writing. We learn to hold the paint brush and the pencil so that we can better control the line. The children’s lines become a language of expression . The first written language is art . Learning to write our letter language will flow from these lines on a child’s paper. The very same line that made the side of their house and the peak of its roof. A child needs time to develop this expression.  We never hurry through this step. This step is everything .

We have completed and hung our new line leader creation. All of our beautiful yarn wrapped branches connected together to make this lovely masterpiece created by our whole class. A true community project. In previous years, our line leader mobile had the days of the week. This year, we are doing it a bit differently. Instead, we are using the words yesterday, today, and tomorrow, at least for now. It’s already provoked a few good discussions. Today, a child asked why isn’t there anyone’s name on “tomorrow”? We talked about this day being the last day of our school week and that tomorrow is a day we don’t come to school. On Monday, we might wonder why there is no one on yesterday. This is our attempt at finding a new way to signify who the line leader is without using the days of the week. We might add the days of the week as we feel it appropriate. For now, we are doing   a lot of thinking about what the words “before” and “after” mean. It’s come up for us as a group this year, the ide

Many parts make a whole.... In our exploration of our faces we learned that many body parts make up one whole face. We also found that we have many similarities and differences. Though we each have the same body parts (two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth), those facial features differ from one person to another. This is how we are all similar and yet also very unique-looking individuals. Using various objects, we found how each component of our face could be represented with an everyday item. A key could be a nose. Leaves could represent eyes. A curly piece of wire kinda looks like a smile. “I’m going to use these for my rosy cheeks,” one person giggled while placing pink buttons on each side of her nose.   While picking out objects to represent each part of our face, we were also very observant. One individual chose moss for her hair instead of using pine straw because “pine straw isn’t curly and my hair is very curly!” Some used blue glass beads for their blue eyes and round rocks