Community Rainbow

This community project is a teacher's dream!  At every step of the way, children were actively engaged, working at their own pace, achieving their own specific objectives.  

 To start with, I placed scissors, magazines, and sorting bowls on the table for open exploration with our 3s.

 At this point in the year, I am more comfortable with 3s using scissors somewhat independently.  We are still practicing how to hold them, and use them efficiently, but they have the safety stuff down.  3s really need this time to "practice" scissor work.  Free cutting in magazines provides just this opportuity, without any unnecessary pressure of cutting on lines.  Just cut!

 

Adding the sorting bowls provided an extra challenge for the children.  After they cut, I asked them to sort the items by color.  Asking them to sort also gave them a purpose for the cutting. 

 Before the cutting commenced, I settled on the carpet to draw our rainbow template.  Before long, I had attracted a crowd!  I was excited that they were so interested in the project, they were willing to leave their centers.  Our subject this week is weather, and rainbows are a perfect tie in to St. Patrick's Day.  We talked about the order of the colors, and how rainbows are formed.  

 Then the fun began.  As you can see, they did so well with this.  It was a team project all the way.  They worked in waves.  Some stayed a while, some went back and forth.  Most importantly, they shared the glue, helped one another, and cooperated so nicely.  

 Before long, we were able to see that we needed to find more red, yellow, and orange.  Now I was able to add an another skill to the basket!  Sending them back to the magazines to look for specific colors, created an opportunity to practice visual discrimination skills.  

 Perhaps the most surprising thing to me was what happened when the 4s came to school the next day...

 They wanted to help finish the project!  I was a wonderful opportunity to extend the learning to a new class, and offer them the same learning opportunities.  

If you look closely here, you can see that one of my clever 3s decided that since I had not included a space for white things on the rainbow, that they would glue the white pieces on the extra paper around the rainbow.  Now, if that is not good thinking I don't know what it!   I would have bee easy to just peel those off as a mistake, but when I asked the child what he was doing, he had a very good explanation.

I love that I am learning right alongside these children.  I could not have imagined all the learning opportunities that would come from this simple "art project".  As you can see it is so much more.