We have been talking a lot about each of us being unique individuals and having similarities and differences in our class. We started out group time a little bit differently today. We sang the song "The More We Get Together" and welcomed each child by name to school today. When their name was called they got to feed our birdy puppet some food today. We love to use puppets and the kids love to have special "jobs" to do when their name is called. It teaches them to have good listening ears and to be patient and wait their turn. Today for one art project we made self portraits. Each child was given a piece of white paper, some multicultural crayons with the different shades of brown and peach as skin, hair and eye colors and a mirror. The instructions were to look at themselves in the mirror and pay attention to all the little details of their own face. They carefully chose the crayons that best matched their own skin color and made sure to draw their hair just the same as it looks in real life any other details that make them unique such as glasses or bangs. They worked really hard and really enjoyed looking at their own pictures and at their friends pictures. The self portraits are proudly displayed on our classroom wall, so pop downstairs and check them out when you have time! They are adorable!
We also read the book "We Dream Of A World" and talked about each of the pages. The book is about students dreams for the world such as peace, no polution, no endagered animals, etc. Each page is drawn by students as well, so the children really loved looking at the pictures and thinking about their own dreams for the world. After I read the book I gave each child a round piece of paper. This in itself was really fun for them because normally we color or draw on square shaped paper and we never really work on a round piece. It adds a whole new twist to their art work!
They thought for quite a while about what they wanted their dream for the world to be. Then they used a pen to draw all of the outlines and finally colored it in with crayon. At the end we glued the round drawing to a square colored piece of paper like a frame and finished the sentace "We Dream Of A World...." The children really enjoyed this project and it got them thinking about their future and what their world will be like when they are adults. I love to hear about their dreams, and wonder about the future with them.