Not a box...

From the story “Not a box” by Antoinette Portis and “The Birthday Box” by Leslie Patricelli, the children came up with different ideas on what they can use a box for and make it “not a box”.

Some of there ideas were:  car, house, bedroom, bed, etc. They all decorated their boxes by using paint, sparkles, ribbons and other art materials. 

The children decided to make a house or a bedroom for their pets made out of clay. The children were risk-takers when they explored modeling with clay and thinkers when they decided how they will decorate their houses.  

3D Art

What does 3 D art mean?
3 dimensional art is something like a sculpture, clay art, metal works, pottery, beading or really anything that can be handled, touched or perceived to be 3 dimensional.”It is something that sticks out and can be seen from different sides (perspectives)”.

In connection to our decoration unit, the children decorated some 3 D Christmas trees and snowmen. They had a large variety of materials to choose from.

Emilie's table decoration

Emilie, her mother and her grandmother decorated one of the lunch tables. The children's observation about the decoration was: "I think Emilie likes purple, because the decorations are all purple" "It is very simple" " I love the marbles" 

Emilie and other children got a chance to sit at the table during lunch time. 

Thank you Emilie, for decorating the lunch table. It was lovely.

A decoration can tell us a story about a person. It can describe what that person feels or likes. 

Art - Contour line

On one of our art days, the children traced their bodies. They worked in partners and took turns tracing the contour of their bodies. The children were very careful to follow their outlines accurately. 

Afterwards, the children came up with ideas to decorate their own body shape. They used crayons, markers, paper and glitter. 

Art activity with Christy:

The children went to the forest to collect some leaves. They observed the lines (veins) of a leaf and followed the contour with their finger. Christy talked to them about the shape of their leaves and gave them 3 different choices. The children were able to paint the leaf and imprint it onto their pieces of paper, trace the contour of their leaf or to look at the leaf and try to draw its shape. Christy encouraged the children and opened conversation about their art – the children observed the lines(veins) that a leaf had, and talked about the  different shapes: heart, oval, round. 

Using sticks to build furniture

 The children were excited to explore another idea with their sticks. We used the sticks to build furniture. We observed Vincent Van Gogh’s bedroom and by being thinkers, the children decided that his bedroom was not decorated. By the train area, you will be able to observe his 3D bedroom, created by the children. Now that we have built his furniture, the next step, is to decorate his bedroom.

This week we will focus our attention on sewing some pillows, blankets and collecting materials to decorate the walls. The activity will be open to everyone. We will observe while someone is decorating the bedroom and we will take some pictures. 

At the end we will make a chart to see if we all have the same taste in decorating or if we have different ideas.

IB profile words – Open minded and Thinker

It all started with the book “Not a stick” by Antoinette Portis.

The children came up with different ideas of what a stick can be used for and not be called “a stick”.  All the children had a turn holding a stick in their hands.  Becky was saying that by being open minded, they could come up with different ideas about how they could use the stick. 

These are some of the ideas that the children came up with:  hammer, bottle, magic wand, pencil, etc..

After coming up with all the different ideas, we all went to the forest to collect some sticks. Because one of their ideas was that sticks could be used as decoration, the children received a piece of cardboard and by using their creativity they decorated it with sticks from the forest.