Disappearing Colors and Monsters

TODAY'S ACTIVITY
Usha continued her week of sensory color mixing. Yesterday, children used trays of shaving cream and watched the colors change from yellow to orange to red to violet to blue. Adding dry pigments in primary colors of yellow, red and blue had two effects. The first, and more obvious effect was artistic - the colors changed. The second, added effect was scientific - the dry pigments absorbed the fluids in the shaving cream, making the whole thing nearly evaporate.

"Hey, where did my color go!" was the 'teachable moment' far more fascinating than the color changes themselves.

MUSIC AND MOVEMENT
No, we're not doing laundry. We used scarves today in our music class, singing about shapes. As the songs progressed, our square scarves changed to rectangles, triangles and smaller squares. We all know that attending (or teaching) at this school means doing lots of laundry, often. I'm not so sure the throwing and catching part of these exercises will fit in so well on laundry day.

TODAY'S STORY
Go Away Big Green Monster, by Ed Emberly. You're probably familiar with this deceptively simple book. It's brightly colored illustration is created by pages of solid color with shapes cut out. This volves with the addition of one facial feature per page, cumulating midway with the fully realized (and not very scary) monster. Each successive page removes one feature until the monster is gone. Literally, it is one single picture of the monster. The real purpose of this book is its masterful illustration of colors, facial parts and, most of all,sequencing. Each part of the illustration is removed in the exact reverse order by which it was created.
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Here's a link to . Any of us who went to school in the 70s-80s will remember his simple, step-by-step, how-to-draw books. Even though they run counter to Rhoda Kellogg's child-centered art philosophy, they're just so fun.