Grape fun and observations in Ward Hobbs

The backyard grapes are at the peak of ripeness.

So the children helped with another harvest and carefully stripped each grape from its stem in preparation for another round of grape juice!

We also harvested the potatoes and beets from the back yard and while doing so we found a wonderful praying mantis.

This inspired some great conversations and Vida supported the children in observing our new friend and recording our findings in science journals.

Inside the children experimented with different materials on a black drawing surface.

It was another fun filled week in Ward-Hobbs!

Ward Hobbs studio week: September 27

The children of Ward Hobbs were excited to get back into the studio! And we had a wonderful time playing and discovering together! 

Dramatic play continues to unfold giving children wonderful opportunities to collaborate, manage limited resources, practice conflict resolution and imagine together.

This child noticed that the characters didn't have arms so he drew some and taped them on

The children had lots of opportunities to explore color using oil pastels, liquid water colors and inktense pencils along side black markers.

XP Corner:

The XP children continued their examination of storytelling working to scale last weeks drawings up to a larger size rendered in watercolor.

Next, the XP teachers and I helped each child to consider their drawings, particularly the characters and setting.  Then the children decided what dialogue might be added. Utilizing soundboards the children phonetically sounded out their words and labeled their work with appropriate captions.

BJ is back in the studio this week making grape and peach juice fresh from our backyard garden.  Harvesting together is a traditions at Children's Garden and one we all enjoy! 

The consensus was an unanimous, YUM!

We'll see you all back next week!

Ward Hobbs is back in the studio!

The studio is up and running! This week in Ward-Hobbs we are focused on observational drawing using some natural materials from the playground as inspiration.

I set out graphite pencils 6B, white prisma colors, and black pens. No color. One of the children asked me for some green and I said what do you see on the table that we might be able to use. She discovered a green tomato leaf and we tried rubbing it on the paper.

I had placed some grapes on the table as well, from the outdoor arbor, and one child discovered that she could remove the purple skin and rub that onto the paper for a violet hue. 

Another child chose some sunflower petals and exclaimed, “It works! It is a very faint yellow Angelina but it IS yellow.” And it was indeed.
The resulting drawings were beautiful and subtly infused with natural colors.

XP Corner:

The Ward-Hobbs XP class is beginning a writers workshop and story telling unit. The teachers and I agreed to begin with a studio inquiry inspired by ancient cave paintings.

The XP children joined me outside where we talked about our ancient ancestors living in caves and telling stories inspired by the things that mattered to them: community, animals and the hunt. And in order to write their stories they didn’t use an alphabet emulating sounds, rather they drew pictures. Pictures tell a story!

We discussed the limitation of materials our ancestors had at their disposal and agreed to write our picture stories on brown paper (no caves nearby) using three shades of watered-down clay (a gray, red and white) and charcoal. 

The results were positively wonderFull!