What colors live in the forest?

As we have watched the children explore color in the classroom we wondered if they ever notice the colors that surround us in the forest. 

At our morning meeting we asked, "what colors live in the forest?"

Immediately the children started to name colors that they remembered seeing...

Green! Brown! Purple! Red! Blue! 

We wondered where we might see those colors? Would there be other colors to see? Could we make those colors?!

Guided by curiosity, we headed off to the forest armed with magnifying glasses, clipboards with paper, paint pens, and baskets for collecting some of our findings! 

We collected so many beautiful pieces of nature to bring back to our space. We found leaves, seed pods, tiny flowers, a special tiny leaf, lots of sticks, and little pieces of wood.

While some children were busy collecting nature other friends took time to paint what they were seeing. Our paint pens moved with purpose, mixing and shaping the things that we saw around us! We noticed shades of green, purple, and brown. We noticed that if we mix colors together we get a new wonderful color. We painted colors that wanted to see in the forest and we just had fun!!!

SB: "I see yellow and a little bit of brown-ish!"

LB: "I see purple and green!"

HA: "I found green"

FJ: "Look! I found white flowers!"

LaS: "I found berries! They are purple."

"I found purple and green. The purple gets a little more pink when it's on my hand."

EM: "I found brown sticks!"

FJ: "Look what I found! It's brown."

EM: "This mushroom is white and has some pink and brown on the bottom."

This friend worked very hard on creating the best color that he could to make the tree that he was looking at. He talked about how he mixed the colors to make it dark so that it looked like the tree bark! Later he took his paper to the tree to see how well he had done!

"I'm making the sky."

"I made the tree and the sky is going to be red and orange."

"Why red and orange?"

"It's like our book (referring to the book Sky Colors that we read earlier in the week), sometimes the sky is red and orange like a sunset."

"I made a leaf, it's green. There's lots of leaves here."

"See my colors match the plant, green leaves and purple berries."

"I made a rainbow, I want there to be a rainbow to be at the forest."

When we got back to the classroom we shared our drawings with each other. We talked about our noticings and how we mixed colors to create the shades of what we saw in the forest. It was a beautiful conversation about what colors live in the forest! These observations will guide our learning over the next few weeks! We will see where it takes us next!

But, this exploration wasn't just about colors it was also about slowing down, observing closely, and seeing the world through an artist's eye! Through nature the children are learning the there is so much beauty in the small things and perspective gives us a new lens to look through!

We also worked hard to sort through our all of the beautiful pieces of nature that we discovered while in the forest. We will be using this as we continue our work throughout the next few weeks! We can't wait to see where it will take us!

Be Happy, Be Kind

Sois Heureux, Sois Gentil