Friday, October 5, 2018

Sm-ART-ists

This week began with exploring water in one avenue--through artistic expression with watercolors--and ended with another--hiking through nature in the sprinkling rain. These kindergarteners are QUITE the artists! We read one of my favorite books by Philip Reynolds, The Dot, which talks about how children can take pride in doing their best on work and how that ownership and pride affects the beauty of what they create. Then we discovered how to use watercolors and painted our own dots on official watercolor paper. Watercolor paints are also a new option for students to use during Choice Time at the end of the day; many students chose to paint this week in the afternoons.



I love seeing how each piece turned out differently, and it was also encouraging to see how each child enjoyed exploring watercolors. One student discovered how to create new colors: "Look Ms. Maryn! If I mix blue and yellow, I got green!" Another child turned to me and said excitedly, "Look! The water turned brown!" When I asked why they thought the water turned brown, they replied, "Because! When you mix ALL the colors together, it just kinda turns to brown." I loved seeing how their questioning and curious natures emerged through a simple watercolor activity.

Another highlight from this week was the rain! On Thursday, the kids spent most of snack recess and all of lunch and lunch recess inside, so it was a relief when the precipitation tapered off enough for us to do a short, quick hike by Shirley Canyon. Hopefully the weather next week will allow for lengthened time outside, but the time we spent out in nature was beautiful. Kids were each given a paint swatch and were tasked with finding colors in nature that could match their samples.

They eagerly scampered along the trail, exclaiming, "LOOK! This pink matches the rock!" or "I found a leaf that matches the yellow! Now I need to find one to match THIS color!" A giant thank-you to all the parents who helped out with this. An idea to further extend this activity at home would be to have the kids create a picture or nature collage that places the grass, leaves, sticks, etc., next to the paint color swatches. I can't wait to see what next week brings! :)


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