Welcome Magnolia Families to our biweekly blog: enjoy seeing what we’re up to in the classroom! These last two weeks we’ve been diving deep into all things Beautiful Brown.
A Few Reminders:
- Our End of the Year Celebration will be on Friday May 31st at 9:15a to 11:00a. Here’s the invite and RSVP PS post!
- We are accepting donations of brown paper handled bags for our last day of school- we will be putting the children’s artwork portfolios/teddy bears etc. in brown paper bags to take home.
- Save the date for a fun Garden Party on Saturday June 1st at the ECC! Teacher Emily will be hosting as a TBS Board Teacher Trustee along fellow board members, and we have lots of fun activities planned, light refreshments, opportunities to learn about our certified natural habitat and even a raffle with fun prizes!! (*hint- one of the prizes is a trip to Fentons with Emily!!!) Stay tuned for an official event page on ParentSquare where you can RSVP š
Beautiful Brown
What happens when you mixĀ red,Ā blueĀ andĀ yellowĀ together? You makeĀ brown! This week we began investigating the beauty in all things brown. We had a special sharing circle featuring all things brown. We’ve been investigating this wonderful composite colorĀ with our senses. All around the classroom, works have appeared that feature the many shades of brown. We are also learning lots of things about color value-Ā you canĀ tintĀ andĀ shadeĀ to make brown lighter or darker!
Skin Tone
Weāve been reading lots of books about skin tone and have been so excited to begin our exploration of the origins of skin color and creating our very own skin tones in paint. We read a book called āAll the Colors We Are: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Colorā by Katie Kissinger and Chris Bohnhoff, and learned that many of our guesses were spot on! We get our skin color from three things:Ā Our family,Ā the sun, andĀ melanin.Ā Depending on where our family is from, our the color of our skin might be lighter or darker. When we have lots of melanin in our skin, the color of our skin is darker. Melanin helps protect our skin absorbing harmful UV rays and provides pigmentation to our skin cells. Emily sat with each child, one at a time to create their very unique and beautiful skin tone with paint.
Self Portraits
We also began our sketches and ink outlines for our self portrait project! We had lots of fun brainstorming all of the parts of our faces. While many of us have similarĀ features, we are all different in small and big ways. As we looked around the circle in small groups, we noticed similarities and differences. Mitra set up a fun activity using wood, beads, buttons and yarn to create self portraits out of loose parts. Then, one at a time, each child sat with Emily and were invited to look into a mirror to notice their faces. We noticed scale and proportion, and sketched biiiiiig self portraits on a large piece of paper. We used a special sharpie marker to create our self portrait outline. We will be continuing these next week and adding our skin tone, a background color, and even yarn for hair!
How our Beautiful Brown Self Portrait Project Helps us Understand Race, Ethnicity and Identity
Throughout our Beautiful Brown inquiry, we have been making connections together about where our skin color comes from, noticing the similarities and differences in all of our skin tones, and affirming that all skin is beautiful and special and good. With help from many fantastic picture books, weāve sparked many conversations about how weĀ identify ourselves in terms of what name we like to be called, our gender identity, and our racial and ethnic identity.Ā One of the wonderful benefits to picture books is that they contain stories and images thatĀ reflectĀ the children in our classroom (mirrors) andĀ provide a view (windows) into stories of people that are different. We are mindful about the books we rotate in the classroom so that students feel seen and understood. We live in a time where there are many book lists available for families to explore diverse, age-appropriate reading material at home. Youāre always welcome to email us with a specific topic in mind and we can help direct you to some titles we love! Here are some of our favorites here in Magnolia:
