Ongoing activities with the color blue
For this week’s post, I decided to focus on what’s been done lately with the children.
Weeks ago, we had started exploring the color blue in a very free spirit. They had different tools they could use whenever they felt like it, such as pencils, crayons, pipettes, cotton, and so on, or their hands if they wanted to! Mixing different intensities of blue when they wanted to create anything freely helped many of them to get engaged with artistic work. A context without any expectation of result interested some children that were initially not interested into painting, for example.
Since we were onto color blue, there was not a better moment to choose Raven Child and the Snow Witch as the book of the week.
This book, that the children really enjoyed listening to, helped us focus on two important elements of the moment: the snow, winter, and the color blue.
I don’t intend to spoil you the story, but the story relates to the power of love as a warming and strong tool to win against the cold snow of winter. Lucky us, a lot of the story is also linked to the color blue!
To help us memorize the story, and learn how to re-create collectively a story, we made an activity based on only one rule: “let’s build what we remember about the story”.
That’s how Max chose to create the heart of the main character, Anya, that ultimately helped to save her mom. Dorine chose to build the mountains, and Maia built a construction of the castle; they both integrated the notion of 3D by doing so, such as Michelle who chose to do the Raven.
Neo chose to draw the Snow witch, one of the main characters of the story.
Audren helped the whole group by preparing the pieces of paper that would be integrated to the constructions, and Amaya was my main assistant when anyone needed help understanding the purpose of cutting paper and how to do it.
We all learnt something by reading that story, but what struck me the most is the specific details that were the most important to each kid. It says a lot on what is important personally to them, may it be characters, landscapes, or places.
I would highly recommend you to pass by and check their little exposition in the piazza, and/or buy the book to read it with them! Samu’s mom came to finish the book with us and the children were really happy about it!
With the teachers...
A similar setting as the one with the Raven Child was put into place with Elizabeth, but for something very special and different: the Advent Calendar.
At L’Ecoline there is a tradition in the school group of gifting to our loved ones some drawings or constructions, that we put into their envelopes.
Elizabeth brought us some Christmas Magic already by putting nice music and offering children a space to fully express all their abilities to create, while getting inspiration from their friends. We have been amazed by how talented they were, and hopefully, you will get to see it pretty soon – or if you’re as curious as Maia’s dad, you already got a glimpse of it!
Moments like this emphasize how important it is for the teachers to build a community of love and friendship between the children.
On Laurence’s side and in the classroom, some chemical magic happened. She calls it “cabbage chemistry”, which is an appropriate name when you discover the experiment.
The children first observe that the cabbage pigment adds color to the water; and the more cabbage you put, the darker the color gets. Ultimately, it means that you can choose what color you want first, and determine the exact number of cabbage pieces you need to get it. Science, kid!
Last but not least!
As you may or may not know, this will be my last blog post of the year, as I’m leaving my role at l’Ecoline at the end of this week to do something less funny than building amazing Kapla’s constructions with children (science research at UNIL), as you can see in the pictures below.
I wanted to take a little place in today’s post to thank wholeheartedly each parent and each kid for the trust you put in me and the team for the previous weeks or years.
This has been an incredible pleasure to meet you, big and little humans, and to spend time with you laughing or crying, having deep discussions, getting snack together, putting unforgettable songs on purpose in your children’s heads, being amazed by the progress of every kid, doing “floor is lava”s, and so on.
Your kindness towards me and the team has been the best reward I could’ve asked for, and I’m looking forward to seeing you again this year when I come back to say hello.
I wish you all a wonderful end of the year, and I hope you never stop to find that magic the Ecoline brings to your children, within you as well.
I’m extremely bad at goodbyes, so let’s not make this one. I will definitely see you soon!
May you have a peaceful week,
Coco
