Grouptime events

Just like our surroundings people decorate their bodies with colourful clothing and accessories to make themselves beautiful and presentable. We looked at photographs of different cultural groups showing variety of ways people use headdresses, hats, necklaces and clothes to represent who they are and where they are from. The children made the connection between clothing and group identity. We thought of team jerseys and uniforms and as one child pointed out "it helps us sort out the people in their groups". The children were also intrigued with costumes and shirt logos so together we designed a t-shirt to represent the Earth group. Together they decided that a picture of the Earth will best describe their team.

Goodnight moon! Goodnight cow jumping over the moon! The children observed that people decorate their surroundings to make it nice and beautiful. Inspired by the story Goodnight Moon by WiseBrown the children transformed the drama area into a nice, cozy bedroom. They thought of their own bedroom decorations like the toys, stickers and patterned sheets, and picture frames which they feel are important things to have in a bedroom. We carefully looked at the illustrations of the story and identifies which ones are decorations and which ones are not. In our discussions we realized that we all have different criteria on what makes a decoration and that we all have our own perspective on what beautiful might mean. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKqV9uuXa0Y

Decorations are things which are shiny, sparkly, colourful, beautiful. According to the children, black colour in particular, is not a shiny colour therefore cannot be used as a decoration. We challenged this thinking and looked at different art artists like Franz Klein who did a series of work using only the colour black. After many experiences with the colour black some children began to notice it more in our classroom decorations and their clothing. One child even mentioned about decorating her body with something black on her t-shirt.

What a way to start the new unit... cupcakes galore!! After reading Max and Ruby Bunny Cakes the children got busy and eagerly decorated their own cupcakes. They loved poking the colourful sticks and pretended they were candles and some even made faces using marshmallows and chocolate chips. They were very careful in placing their pieces and were not tempted at all to eat while they worked. One comment was: "I want to decorate my cupcake and make it beautiful."