Welcome back from Spring Break! Whether your family traveled or stayed close to home, I hope your two week break was restful. I found myself feeling so refreshed on Monday morning and happy to be back with my sweet class! For weeks we have been anxiously awaiting the warmer weather and dreaming about everything we will do in Spring. Our friends are pretty excited about the possibility of more time outside, getting the bikes out, and perhaps taking a field trip or two to check out some bridges in the area.
To get us in the spirit of Spring, I brought some fresh spring tulips with me on Monday! I put them out on the Art Table with some magnifying glasses and it wasn't long before our friends were busy investigating them.
"Let's get the crayons and draw them!" Molly suggested. She took a look at the flowers and saw she needed four colors: red, yellow, black, and green. Once she had her materials ready, she got to work!
Many of our friends were inspired by Molly's idea and decided to sketch the tulips as well.
This activity involved some risk taking on our friends' part. Many kids felt the pressure that comes with drawing something "real". They were cautious about giving this a try, worried that their final product might not come out looking like the actual flower. At the end of free choice, each child shared their drawing at meeting.
When I brought in the tulips, I figured we would probably end up discussing the parts of the flower and noticing things like the stem, roots, petals, pollen, etc. Silly me, trying to plan ahead! Our friends surprised (and amazed me) when they took this activity in a totally different direction.
"That's weird! The pictures are all different!" Brayden observed. When we looked at everyones sketches we noticed that some friends included the inside of the tulip while others' art focused mainly on the outside petals. "Yeah and I made mine in a pot with dirt, but some friends just made a stem," David added. "I like that some kids made all three flowers and some just made one," Ethan observed. "You mean everyone was looking at the same flower but their pictures didn't turn out the same?" I asked. We learned that a group of people can all look at the same thing but see something different. In the end, we all agreed that there isn't just one right way to do something. "If you try hard that's the best thing," Emilia said. "Yeah, cause they're all beautiful you know," Lucas pointed out. And with that, he found the perfect way to end our discussion.