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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

We Are Alike, We Are Different

At the beginning of the year, while I was waiting to see what interests started popping up for Inquiries, we spent time getting to know each other and building our community!  Of course, we read books to get us thinking.  Here is one the kids loved that talked about how our facial features are different. 


I passed out mirrors and the kids all looked closely at themselves. We discussed how our faces had different shapes. Our eyes had a color, but also a shape! Same with our noses! 


We all made a blackline sketch of our faces to show how we saw ourselves in the mirror.



The next day, we had a discussion about what practice means. They did a beautiful job for a first try, but if they did it again, do they think they would do better, worse, or the same?  They all felt they would do better!  We discussed that practice helps us get better!  So we tried again and they felt that their second try was even better than the first.

The next day we read The Color of Us. It is one of my favorites! The names used to describe the different colors of people are beautiful!



During our exploration time, the kids took turns matching water color paint to their skin tone and painting the skin on their second self portrait. During this process, they learned how to paint with watercolor by rubbing the brush against the side to get rid of the drips and taking care of our water colors by washing their brush after each color. After it dried, they painted their eyes, mouth and hair. 







I always love these self portraits!  They dictated to us what their biggest goal was for them to be able to do be the end of Kindergarten and we wrote their goal on their self portrait. Here are some of their goals:
"I want to learn how to grow big muscles."
"I want to learn how to write my name correctly."




Here is one of my favorites:


Here is the display of their work:




Next, they want to create a friendship painting using their handprints inspired by one my kids made last year that is dislayed in the hallway! I can't wait to see how they make it their own!

12 comments:

  1. Hi Darla! I love your blog and am delighted to see you are in West Carrollton! I teach 1st grade in Troy, but live in Centerville ... Would love to visit your classroom sometime if you are willing. Thanks so much for the inspiring posts! Ana

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    1. Absolutely!!! Just let me know and we can work out a date!

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  2. As gorgeous as ever, Darla. I have been completely inspired by one of your portrait displays & have done something really similar this year. Had lots of compliments on it, so thank you! - Rachel (",)

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    1. Thank you Rachel (",)! You are so encouraging! Thank you for your kind words!
      Darla

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  3. I love the drawings the children created. I can hardly wait to try your idea, especially have the kids tell me their goals by the end of Kindergarten. Thank you so much for sharing everything you do with the children. I would love to hear some of you provocations.

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    1. Thank you so much for your kind words! It is my pleasure! I will try to post more pics of any provocations I have set up!
      Sincerely,
      Darla

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  4. This is wonderful - it goes into what we are doing right now. Thank you so much!
    Michelle @togolightly

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    1. It is my pleasure! I am so glad that you found it useful!!!
      Sincerely,
      Darla

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  5. I have a question! It looks like you are using liquid water colors. Are the children mixing their own skin colors or are you using pre-mixed water color skin tones?

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    1. I mix up several colors for them choose from based on the skin colors we have in our room. We did a friendship painting with their handprints using tempra paint. For that they mixed the colors to match their skin.

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  6. Thank you for sharing your beautiful and inspiring kindergarten. I'm am returning to the classroom after a long absence and am very excited to do a version of these activities with my Young 5s Kindergarten class when school starts in a few weeks. Your blog is helping me think through classroom set up as well. So helpful!

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  7. This is wonderful, thank you for sharing. I am going to use this on our first two days back :)

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