Caper Day

 What a FABULOUS caper day we had today.  We invited our friends from Magnolia and Sycamore to share in our discoveries and learning about colors.

How can you paint the color of you?

My brown is Beautiful

How can you paint a pattern?

Usually we have a question that guides our learning.  We often call them "invitations" or "provocations"  Today there was no question, but rather a statement

My Brown is Beautiful

What does your brain think when you hear that?

"Crabs are brown.  This is my crab." JA

"Mountains are beautiful and brown, and my friend AS." ESE

"A bear is beautiful and brown."

"This is me." HW

Are you brown?  "I'm a kind of brown.  Tan brown" HW

"I think about playing with my brothers.  This is my baby brother and this is me." JK

"My skin!" DM

Brown IS beautiful.  We saw images of family and friends, nature and animals, and even self portraits.  One friend looked all around the room and named all of the brown things he saw.  We noticed there are a LOT of "stumps and logs" in our spaces.  

"Logs are brown.  They are cool."  ESE

As we continue to explore colors we are opening our eyes to really see the beauty in all of them.

How can you paint the colors of you?

The children were set to explore color mixing today.

For some it was a challenge to look past the colors of their clothes.

For others they couldn't seem to get beyond painting with their favorite colors.

Some revelled in the process of mixing colors ALL together and creating a swirled work of rainbow art.

We also saw children sit and gaze at their faces, intently looking.

What makes each of us special?

How am I different from my friend, and yet still so much alike?

What makes me uniquely me?

Big questions and thoughts for young learners...and for adults too!

Children love playdough, and the Birch children love painting.  When we paired paint with the playdough their little minds were blown!

"Paint PLAYDOUGH?!" we heard again and again.  And each time, immediately followed by "COOL!"

"What does this say?" these friends asked.

I read them thed question and watched.

"What is a pattern anyway? this Sycamore friend said.

"It's red purple green, red purple green, red purple green." 

Ahh, I hear you saying the same colors again and again and again.

"That's how you make a pattern."

I love watching children be resources for one another!

"I 'erased' my pattern!" GC

sycamore blog     magnolia

Walking Wednesday

It's Walking Wednesday!  Birch friends guess what?  YOU have Walking Wednesday, but the teachers have a special Wednesday too.  Every Wednesday we have Wacky Wednesday!

"What's 'Wacky Wednesday;?" JI

That's a great question!  The teachers all take turns bringing special treats for one another to brighten their day.  Today it's the Birch and Sycamore teachers turns.  

We have been talking about feelings and emotions throughout all of our spaces.  Our friends are becoming very adept at identifying their own feelings.  And we are becoming more familiar with identifying and labeling the feelings of others, especially big feelings.  But, how can we think about the feelings of others who aren't right here in front of us?  How do you think the teachers feel when it's Wacky Wednesday and we see treats in our lunch room?

"They feel happy!"  You are right.  Treats make teachers happy just like they make all of you happy!

But guess what?  We goofed.  Yep, even teachers goof.  It's okay, everyone makes mistakes sometimes.  We can say "I made a mistake, what can I do to fix it?"  It is important that we model what it looks like, and provide language that supports our work.  We showed vulnerability to our students by admitting a mistake and then showing them what our plan was.  And the best part?  The Birch friends were part of the solution!

So, what was our dilemma?  We made chili and all of our chili has meat in it.  Some of our teacher friends don't eat meat.  How do you think they would feel if there were treats and they couldn't eat any of them?      "They would be sad." we heard many friends say.  Putting ourselves into the place of others feelings is a hard skill.  Continuing to provide ways to experience other's feelings is a priority for us as teachers.  

So, we thought we would take our Walking Wednesday adventure to make some teachers feel included and buy some vegetarian chili at a local store.

And then an amazing thing happened.  We made a connection yet ANOTHER piece of learning we have been working on...maps!  Our friend MT brought us a map from an event that she went to this past weekend.

"It's from the holiday walk." MT  I went to that too!  In fact, I know some of other friends were there as well.  I remember walking right past the store we were just talking about.  I wonder if we can use your map to help us get to the store!?

"I see train tracks.  There are train tracks at the zoo.  This is my map of the zoo." JL

Ah, you are noticing things that are on the zoo map.  I wonder if there are other things on this map that might give us a clue and help us figure out if it's a zoo map.

"I KNOW it's not a zoo map, because I was there!" MT

JL, you have made a great connection using what you know.  And your friend MT is a wise resource telling you what she knows about this map too.  Thanks for helping out a friend!

We searched for "Straubs" on the map and we know where we are headed!

"It's number 7." MT

We headed out the front doors of our school and our friends were ready to lead us!

Once inside we were on a mission to find vegetarian chili.  We found some in the canned food row that was a possibility.

But when we looked a bit more we saw exactly what we needed.  Fresh black bean chili!

Always looking for a learning moment your teachers "forgot" where this can came from.  We need some helpers.  It was in row 3.  Can you help us so we can put this can back in the right place?

"Here it is!" ESE     "It's that one up there." JA

"I can help." DM

Now that we have our mission completed we were ready to warm our teacher-friend's hearts!

Mission accomplished!

Birch friends, how does it make you feel to help someone feel included?

After such a fun adventure we were ready for some indoor fun!

These friends created an obstacle course with a purpose.

We continued our work on painting the color of "you"

It was a great day!

The color of you

How can you paint the color of YOU?

"Ms Lisa, you forgot the paint!" was the first thing I heard.

What?  So I did!  Well, if you are going to paint the color of you what color do you need?  Here is my paint.

"I need pink." MT

You are thinking of your clothes.  The question doesn't say how can you paint the color of your clothes.  Our question says how can you paint the color of YOU.

"I need peach." MT

Okay, what do you need from our paint?

You began to mix and test.  A little of each color added until it was just right for you.

"I need blue." MT

You are blue????  "I need blue for my eyes." MT

You added your eyes, your smile, and even white for your teeth!

RM What do you need to make the color of YOU?

"I need red and yellow." RM

Do you need anything else?

"No." RM

You started to mix your red and yellow together and got a beautiful color.  But, is it the color of you?

"Almost." RM

What do you need to do to get closer?

"I need brown and white." RM

And so you followed the lead of your friend MT and continued to mix and add...a little of this and a little of that until you got it just right to your eyes.

"I need blue and yellow." HW

You are noticing the colors of you clothes, just like your other friend did.  Our question asks about the color of YOU. 

"I need brown, too." HW

So what will happen with those colors?

"I mix them together to make the color of me." HW

And so you mixed and mixed and got....

green!

"You have beautiful green.  Is that the color of you?"

You picked up the mirror and were twisting and turning trying to look in it.  After a bit of observing I realized you were trying to look at your face in the mirror AND capture the colors of the painting you created at the same time.

You filled up your entire paper and then moved you hand to find the color that matches exactly you.

JL what do you need to paint the color of you?

"Brown and white." JL

And then you began painting.

"It's the color 'U'."

Hmmm...as I continued watching you continued painting.

You painted U after U after U after U

"It's all the colors of 'U'" JL

You made your teacher smile with your literal interpretation.

So I pushed you a little bit and asked you which one matched your skin. 

We even dotted your paint on your arm to check it.

You added more "u's" and showed me which one was perfectly you!

We had several friends who JUST started to paint when we got called out for vision screenings.  Here is a sneak peek of what that looked like.

 

Tomorrow we will dig into our paint some more.  We can't wait to see what we discover!