Thursday, February 6, 2014

120- I worked with two girls in the block area of the room.  They were the quickest group to answer the provocation.

What are you making?

E- something.

Teacher, laughing- E, really? What kind of answer is that?

E laughs.

E- I'm making a bridge!

The girls quickly make a bridge and I pose the question of how the cars get up onto the blocks.

E immediately sets up a ramp. Both girls make the car go across the bridge. This was the fastest solution I've seen thus far.

Y then moves onto creating a huge bridge structure with a foundation of square blocks on the "land" and a thin, long rectangular block as the bridge.

Y then sets up a long cardboard tube as a tunnel/ramp and the cars exit her bridge by going through this enclosed ramp.  She then sets up a wonderful example of symmetric balance.

The rest of the class is given a really great provocation. They read a book called, "Spilled Milk" which shows that spilled milk can create images, similar to the way people see images in the clouds. The students are given a dropper and a little container of water and they experiment. Some try to draw specific things, others just drop the water and exclaim with excitement when it looks like something recognizable.

We saw a dinosaur, a kitty, a car, a squirrel and New York State! Once the students have an image they love, they sketch it on paper to remember it.

 116- I took group one to the studio for the second part of our inquiry into balance. They created drawings with symmetric balance. 

108- I brought four students into the studio to create their animal habitats using observational drawing.

This one is turning out really well!

118- I brought another group in to create models of balance using art materials. 

102- We brought a group in to work on their observational drawings of the farm. I showed one group the photographs I took and recorded a little bit of dialogue.

Teacher- What happened here?

S- The horses were parked.

I- They stopped so we could ride a sleigh ride.

J1- We rode on the sleigh ride.

S- We saw horses.

I- We had blankets.

J1- We saw Christmas trees. A really big one!

J2- We saw the forest and animal footprints.

J- That's the corn cage!

I- They make it for the animals and eat it. 

S- It's for the chickens. They eat like this. (Demonstrates eating like a chicken.) 

J2- And one for the roosters.

I- We rode a horse.

S2- No!  It was a  PONY.

J1- I rode the mommy one with the red rope.

I- There was a fire for when we were cold.

J1- It was so hot- we burned!

M- Then we saw a sheep.

S- I didn't know sheep were real!  

And that is why field trips are such a necessary part of a well-rounded education.

101- We finished the Springtime mural!  We had a critique and they reflected on what they learned about Spring!