Using colour to decorate our rooms

Finding the right colour

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Trystan's room

Sarah's room

Sofia's room

Simon's room

The children’s knowledge and experience with colour led into a wonderful activity. Joyfully and thoughtfully, the children choose the colour and decorations that they would like to use to design their “dream rooms”. It was delightful to see them cooperate, share and admire each other’s designs.  Everyone wanted to have something different on his or her walls, something that was their own. On a small piece of paper, they used colour to draw something that they like.

 Howard “I love cars”

Trystan “I would like a blue picture” 

The rooms turned out to be very beautiful. Each room was unique and as the children mentioned before, colour can help us describe someone’s feelings and interests. 

Byron, Howard and Emilie will be working on finishing their rooms this week. 

Decorating our bodies!

Continuous assessment provides insights into students’ understanding, knowledge, skills and attitudes. A chart was made where we recorded everyone’s knowledge on how people use colour.  These are the answers that the children came up with: 

* People use colour to draw, paint, mix, decorate their bodies and rooms, describe someone’s interests, feelings, likes and dislikes.

From this list, the children showed an interest in decorating their bodies using colour. This shows a connection to the central idea “Colour is all around us and makes a difference in our lives”

Their faces lit up as we were decorating them. While looking at their bodies in the mirror, the children’s smiles grew bigger and bigger. As you see in the picture, our activity continued into a dramatic play, where their body decoration transformed them into their character.

Tints and Shades - Mixing colours

After assessing our knowledge on primary, secondary and tertiary colours, the children's interest was in mixing the primary colours together, then adding white and black to make tints and shades.

Simon "Wow, we can make millions of colours" 

Sofia "Mixing is so much fun. Look, bright purple." 

Trystan" We can keep mixing and never stop, the colour is always changing." 

We painted a circle with all the colours that we mixed and Emilie said that we could use them to "decorate the walls"; a colour-mixing mural.

Primary Colours

While sharing their knowledge about colour during the formative week, the children mentioned that we can use colour to decorate. With this in mind, we went for a walk in our neighbourhood to see how people use colours. We went on a primary colour hunt. While walking, Simon said, "I love exploring in our neighbourhood." Full of excitement, the children pointed out everything they found that was a primary colour: leaves, flowers, signs, houses and cars.
Byron noticed that a sign was orange. He pointed at it and said, "Look, it's orange!" Emilie remembered that by mixing the primary colours yellow and red, you get the secondary colour orange. For the next few days, we will be mixing and exploring colours.

COLOUR OUR WORLD

For the Formative week we gathered together and shared all of our Knowledge about COLOUR. 

The Key Concepts that we will focus our attention on during this inquiry are: 

CHANGE - Colour mixing 

FUNCTION - Colour is used to communicate and decorate 

PERSPECTIVE - Colour means different things to different people 

We started our inquiry by creating a map. On one side, we wrote things that we already know about colour and on the other side we will add new discoveries as we go. 

Here are some things that the wind group children shared about COLOUR - Colour is used to describe something, it makes things look different. Colour can make people feel different, especially happy when they wear a colour that they like (Simon). We use colour to decorate things around us (Sofia). By using colour we can make things look cheerful, beautiful (make up, face paint - Emilie and Byron). And Trystan also said that people that wear colourful clothes are awesome. 

We are all very excited to start exploring; mixing and playing with COLOURS! 

Friends like to eat and cook together

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  The Friendship unit is coming to an end. What a lovely exploration, full of inquiries and excitement! Our latest stop on the map "Things that friends want to do" was "Friends like to eat and cook together". We read the story "The little red hen makes a pizza” by Philemon Sturges and the children decided that they want to make a pizza to share with their friends. Thinking about what they would like on their pizza and asking their friends too, we made a shopping list. In the pictures you can see their dedication, their willingness to co-operate and their happiness to share with each other. The plan was to make a delicious pizza that they will enjoy eating together with their friends. The pizza was delicious and we all made sure that everyone had a piece.  

 

Song Game - "Who's under the blanket"

 On Thursday, we played a game called “Who's under the blanket”. One child at a time had to go hide their eyes while another child hid under the blanket. The children in the circle sang the song: “Who's under the blanket, who's under the blanket, come and guess, come and guess” in order to invite the child that was hiding his eyes to come guess who is under the blanket. The task was to ask the person that's under the blanket 3 questions in order to help the seeker guess who it is. 

Laughter and jokes arose as we all had a turn guessing and hiding! 

Friendship Recipe

Hugs, kisses, and games are only some of the things that the children in the wind group show their friendship through. Emilie said that she likes to draw pictures for her friends and everyone got an idea. "Let's make a card and a present for our friends". We made a chart with some of the qualities we find in a friend and things that we do together and came up with a Friendship recipe. 

* 2 cups of Happiness (Four) 

* 1 cup of Stickiness - Hugs (Glue)

* 1 cup of Love (Water) 

* 1 Tbsp. Laughter (Salt)

We mixed them all together and we made dough. Out of that dough, the children modeled a figurine, attached it to the card and wrote a few words to say thank you for being good friends! 

Friendship Garden

After talking about how friendship functions, their connection and responsibilities in our group, we came up with up an idea. We read the book the Curious Garden by  Peter Brown and the children recognized that friends are like flowers. We made a Venn diagram to compare friends and flowers, and everything that they came up with ended up in the middle. We care for our friends/flowers, friends/flowers need water, and need sunlight.  Tristan said that some plants need trimming, and guess what that is not a difference. Sofia pointed out that her friend Esme got a haircut. To connect our exploration and inquiries, we created a friendship garden, where we will be adding everything related to friendship on a daily basis.

Finding New Friends!

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The children in the Wind Group wanted to see what it is like to play with children with whom they do not often play. They all chose someone and introduced themselves and started to play together. Some of them bonded right away, while others displayed parallel play, which is to say they played next to one another without very much interaction.

Trystan said to Simon, “I really like playing with you, we should have a play date together”.  

Emily and Sofia giggled along while showing each other the structures that they built. 

Byron and Howard played next to one another but peeked from the corner of their eyes to see what the other is doing.

Friendship at Creative Minds

It is delightful to observe and interact with the different ways the children show friendship. I hope that these pictures can give you an idea of how much fun they all have.

 Rocco and Trystan playing a game together. What a wonderful way of showing how friends take turns and celebrate each other’s wins.

Natalya said from the tippy top “ Anamaria, remember when I couldn’t climb to the tippy top? My friend Olivia showed me how to do it and now I am very good at it”

Mila and Sofia were holding a concert for everyone in the forest. They were singing songs together and all the other children started to sing along.

 On our way to the forest, the children stopped 
 for a blackberry snack
 
 

A group of children playing a team game - running, climbing and exploring together. 

How Friendship Functions

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 New children, new ideas, new explorations...the first week of September we talked about Olga and the different ways she could look for a friend. Please see Kathryn's Blog for more information about the formative week.

This week the children decided that they want to talk about themselves and their friends. The wind group will have an exploration map where we will record our inquiries and discoveries and we will observe the evolution and the changes at the end of the unit. 

The children received small cut outs of paper people that they decorated. One was of them and the others were of their friends. On a piece of paper, the children drew a picture of what they were doing together with their friends – How Friendship Functions -

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Definition of FUNCTION - "The understanding that everything has a purpose, a role or a way of behaving that can be investigated".

Emilie said: “ I jump with my friend. I run with my friend” 

Trystan said: “ Sometimes I fight with my friends”; “ I play pretend games with my friends” ; Simon said: “ I read with my friends” “ I draw with my friends” ; 

Howard said that he “ holds hands with his friends when they walk to the forest” 

Sofia said that she “ reads books with her friends” “ My friend and I eat together” “ We share toys when we play together” “ 

Byron said: “ I like to play soccer with my friend” and “ I like to bike with my friend”

Please share more ideas on what friendship looks like at home so we can compare different things they do at home and at school with their friends. Pictures will be great so we can show them to the whole group and discuss them. 

Thank you, 

Anamaria 

Take Off!

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10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Blast off! 

The day started with excitement. Building air planes, remote controlling Peter's helicopter and building kites in our small groups. 

The children enjoyed painting and assembling their kites. The whole afternoon was spent outside, the children and teachers running around the fields, flying the kites and air planes. What a blast! 

The Fairy House

With a little bit of magic and a lot of gathered materials, we all went to the forest to build the Fairy house. The children loved having the freedom to choose where the rooms will be and what they will look like. They had a swing in the front garden, a bedroom were they all rested and a big room where they spent time together - reading books, telling stories about their day and playing. What a great time we had! 

The children wanted to share their stories with everyone, so they made a book entitled " A book about a fairy". On the cover it's a picture of themselves posing " the Fairy pose". The story tells everyone about their responsibilities when being a fairy and the pictures show their costumes and favourite colours. 

Serena said that, "anyone can be a fairy, just a big smile, colourful clothes and voila". Library Fairy, Cleaning Fairy, Laundry Fairy, Driving Fairy, Teacher Fairy, etc. Don't we all seem to play these roles at one point or another?

Building Forts in our Forest!

Holding a friend's hand, the children walked in a line, heading this time, to a different part of the forest. We were looking for a special place where we could build our forts. After walking deep into the forest, we found a spot off the trail. All the children had wonderful, creative ideas. They all collected sticks, and in small groups, they built a fort. After the forts were built, we all had a rest and the teachers shared some fruits with everyone.
We had so much fun that we lost track of time.
On our way back we were all so hungry that we decided to have an early lunch!
                                                      Enjoy the pictures!

Fairies and all magical things

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Fairy group’s chant:

Fairies, Fairies, Pixie Dust – POOF POOF

Fairies, Fairies – Magic Wand

Hocus Pocus POOF!

Close your eyes and imagine that you are a fairy. 

Where do you live? What are you wearing? What are your responsibilities?

The children took turns telling a story about what they think it would be like if they were a fairy.

They came up with a list of things you need to do in order to be a fairy:

1. Create your wand - Made out of a stick and 2 stars.  Make sure you use lots of sparkles and flowers. 

2. Design your own dress - Wearing what you like will make you feel more happy and confident.

3. Practice some magic spells - The children said that they don't have the power to transform things, but if they use kind words, they can make people pretend they are different things. Just try to wave your wand and point it to a person. Say: hocus, pocus, please turn into a dog. Guess what? If that person is part of your game, they will start barking. :) 

4. Fairies fly, so the children said that if you swing on the swing or go down the slide it feels like you are flying. It is really fast and it makes them feel really happy. 

5.Build and clean your own house – As you can see in the picture, this is what the fairy group’s enchanted house looks like. 

 6.  Group meeting -  We've got new children in our group so the children shared some very important ideas. They reminded themselves and the others of some friendship rules: Cooperating, sharing, caring, taking turns and using kind words are some points that will help them communicate and work together as a team.

Next week we will go to find an enchanted place in the forest. We will make a list of materials that we need to build our magical house in the forest. 

Isn't it great to see how the children connect this mythical and magical concept with the friendship unit? Having lots of fun, exploring, creating, and imagining together with their friends gives the children a chance to express their individuality.