Sculpting like Giacometti

This morning, Ava, Evan, Sam, Ryan and Lukas opened a produce stand and did an impeccable job taking turns using the coveted cash register. Ashle,y with help from Eli, finished Luca's birthday present with feathers and clay.

At morning meeting, we discussed graduation for the first time. We informed the children that some children would be graduating in a few weeks and we brainstormed which songs they wanted to sing on the big day. We then looked at the artist Giacometti and talked about what we noticed about his sculptures. Many of the children were reminded of the dinosaur bones at the natural history museum. Jake also notice that it looked like he pinched the clay and Ashley thought he pounded it to make so bumpy. Finally, Erica read Giraffe's Can't Dance to the class.

During freeplay, Evan, Ryan, Jake, Ashley, Eli and Isabel all came to work on Giacometti-esque sculptures. Eli was clearly inspired by Giacometti, creating a piece with a lot of texture. Evan was very ambitious and created an entire bumble bee, including a stinger and six tiny legs. Isabel studied one sculpture very carefully and made her own person based off of it. Ryan made a comb for his hair (but waited until the clay dried before he tried it out, thank goodness!)

The block area became Sam's cat store this morning. Sam, Ryan, Lukas and Evan built individual cat homes that were elaborately decorated with the triangle, square and half-butterstick blocks (and even some feathers).

In dramatic play, Oliver, Isabel and Ashley took care of their patient Ava who had a freak accident walking along the back of her sofa and broke both arms and both legs. The doctors gave her casts and then helped her decorate them. Later, Sam created a phone out of paper to help Eli get an appointment in the office.

During lunch the Daisies read What Do You Do With a Kangaroo? and the Sunflowers couldn't get enough of Frog and Toad. They tried to convince Rebecca that it wasn't really 12 o'clock and that she should just keep on reading.