Seeing a Leaf

tracing the shape of the leaf, and then examining the lines that are inside it

drawing the lines inside the shape

trying paint as a tool to trace the leaf

 

painting the lines

 

 leaf

Rainbow makers

Cross Age Interaction

Older children can show how to do hard things, like getting this wheel to stay on the axle.

One of my favorite things about this studio is the way children of different ages can work together. Here are 2 stories where 5 year olds show younger children how to make something work. Often, younger children give inspiration to older friends as well.

After getting a little bit of help from his older friend, he could work on his own

3 year olds try to hang this paper on the easel with tape. It is not quite working.

A 5 year old uses his hands to show how "you have to stick the tape ACROSS the paper so it sticks to the easel."

The Boy Who Loved Shiny Things

 There is a boy that I know who loves to ask me for sparkly things for his projects. I tell him that the sparkly things are there for when you have an idea to make some thing that shines, like a light or a star, and then he explains that he wants to make everything shine. He especially wants to glue some marbles to a paper, but the marbles are for playing with on the light table, and not for gluing. He never fails to ask me if he can have a few of those marbles, whether he is making a model car or a picture for his Mom.

This time when he got a piece of cardboard and asked if he could have some marbles to glue on it, and I said, "those are for playing with on the light table, not gluing. Why do you ask me for those every day?" He said, "because I love shiny things. I just love them so much I want to glue them on paper and take them home."

Now, that was an idea! I asked if he could make that into a story, and he did.

THE BOY WHO LOVED SHINY THINGS

There once was a boy who loved shiny things.

Why did he love shiny things?

He loved to touch them. 

He loved to look at  them.

They made him happy because they were so pretty.

Composing Bad Guy Music

A paper bad guy

At the beginning of the year, there was a group putting hardware pieces together in their classroom, and as is often the case with 4 and 5 year old children, some of the pieces were turned into weapons. The rule around here is that if you want to play a game involving fighting, you have to find a space for the game and an adult willing to come with you there. I went with a group to find some bad guys to fight, but soon the bad guy became me, and the shooting started to involve throwing dirt, which got in my eyes and made me not want to play anymore.

Later, groups began to come to the studio to make paper bad guys that they could really throw things at. However, after making the bad guys, there was not much interest in playing the game any more. Another day, I heard Nolan singing a song about a bad guy as he drew, and I asked if a group would come to the studio to write bad guy music together.

Singing a song as he worked

Initially they wrote lyrics and played on the marimbas. Eventually Oliver began to play on an instrument he designed and made, which is a kind of a drum. Soon a song structure emerged, involving the beginning, a pause called "the separation" (during which everyone falls down), and then "the inning" in which all of the boys get up, play and sing together.

"Bad guys shoot and fight"

"Bad guys shoot and fight"

"the separation"

the separation on another day

Here are the lyrics;
Bad guys shoot and fight
bad guys shoot and fight
bad guys shoot and get on a boat

boom boom boom, psh psh psh (the sound of cannons and guns)
cannons shoot and go boom boom psh
----the separation---
bad guys get captured!
they fall into the sea!
and
get eaten,
by sharks!

I love music, but don't feel like I know how to teach composition or elements of music, and was beginning to worry about how far this composition could go without someone who understands these things better than I do. The next thing I knew, the boys were sharing knowledge and scaffolding each other! The composers  initiated a rhythmic structure for the song, saying;  "Go like this- 'bad guys shoot and fight' one, one! 'Bad guys shoot and fight' one, one." (the "one, one" are the two beat pauses after the lyric). They also chose to remove all of the notes except for the c and the d on the marimbas, so that they could be sure they were all playing the music in the same way.

Teaching a friend how to write "middle C"

Putting the notes in alphabetical order, discovering there is no H

Beginning to write the score by drawing cannons

I challenged the guys to write down their music, which is where the project is currently.

Putting a song in a rainbow

The 'song in a rainbow' group came back to the studio to work on their idea. They worked on their lyrics and tune for a time. Here is what they decided on;

Rainbow rainbow,
I like a rainbow
After rain
Rainbows are so much fun to see

A Unicorn jumping,
over the rainbow

Rainbow hits a tree,
makes a rainbow in a tree

After working on the lyrics and music, they decided they wanted to make rainbows.
After intensely collaborating on the music and lyrics (which never concluded), it was interesting to see the unique way each one represented a rainbow. They did this on their own, and I just stepped in to show where a material was or teach a technique (for instance, showing Lorenzo and Henry how to twist wire).

                                                                   A paper rainbow

                             A representation of the tree that has a rainbow caught in it using wire and sticks.

                                             A rainbow with a song in it. The song is the bell.

                                                      a xylophone to play a rainbow song.

(my camera has decided to take very yellow photos, so I used a color effect, inspired by Jenny over at Let the Children Play )