Beautiful Oops-ing in Kindergarten

One of my favorite books to read to kindergarteners is Barney Saltzberg's Beautiful Oops.  Besides being a great interactive and multi-surface board book that is really fun to read and explore, t's a great reminder that projects may not go as planned, but often "mistakes" are the catalyst for something even more exciting.  Developmentally, kindergarteners are just starting to compare their work to how they think it "should" look, so it's a good time to introduce the idea that an "Oops" can be a new creative starting point.

I gave students construction paper with holes cut out, and offered them several materials to work with, including tissue paper, pattern-paper scraps, glue, tape, scissors, string and pipe cleaners.  They made some incredible creations that will soon be gracing the hallways.

First graders explore 3D color wheel

First graders have been experimenting with color and color mixing in several media, starting with tissue paper, then reading Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh and making overlapping apple prints with primary colored tempera paints.  To further explore and contextualize this learning, this week we used model magic to create physical color wheels, introduced through reading Leo Lionni's Little Yellow and Little Blue together.  This process is great for visual and tactile learners, and manually mixing balls of primary colors into secondary colors is great for motor skills (and lots of fun)!  After creating their own color wheels, students got to mix the rest of the colors together and make unique browns, which sparked a conversation about color ratios.  They used their resulting brown clay to create sculptures to take home.  Here are some of the moments of color mixing delight:

Mural!

Some of you might have heard the rumors or seen the primer going up at the student entrance of the Lower School.  Well, it's happening!  The 7th and 8th graders all submitted written and drawn mural design proposals, and each class voted on the designs of the other class.  From those two, Dan chose the winning design.  The Upper Schoolers have been working hard to sort out all the details, colors, and delegating responsibilities for different classes.  On Tuesday, 7th graders drew the plans onto the wall, and yesterday, 8th graders began painting the background.  Watch it grow!

5th graders - Observational Drawing of Garden Trowels

This week fifth graders have been working on observing form and light on garden trowel, using contour and sensitive line along with directional line shading.  Here are some students at work today:

And their finished drawings of multiple views: