These are our last few days with the chicks. The children are really involved with observing and documenting their growth and the changes they see. Here are a few pictures of them drawing the chicks from real life. This is an important process. This looks like an art project, but really it is also a scientific process and a pre-writing activity. Children have to observe closely and pay attention to detail when drawing from real life. It is a great idea to keep a spiral notebook or other writing notebook with you when you travel in the car, out to eat or to the store. Ask your child to draw what they see. People, food, places. Doing this multiple times at the same place (like the grocery store) shows you how their drawing/writing skills improve with practice. Drawing and writing are basically the same. You have to learn how to make lines to form symbols that represent what you see (or to make meaning on paper). Most of us were raised learning to write by having to write spelling words over and over and over again and dreading it! During this activity many of the children were independently trying to write or they were finding other ways to use letters to represent and remember their thoughts and feelings. This is how you raise a child who loves to write, loves words and loves to learn. This is a very different approach to writing than most of us were raised with. I hope these pictures help you see how successful, involved and excited these children were about writing and drawing. Try this at home. You don't need chickens to do this, just find something that sparks your child's interest. Even trying to draw Sponge Bob will do! Then have them draw a real sponge and compare the two. Just have fun. Oh, and you have to draw too. You have to model what you want them to do. Enjoy the pictures and I threw in one video not related directly to the drawing project just for fun.
 |
| The drawing/writing lesson started out by asking the children to look at how much the chicks had changed over the past week. They noted that the biggest change was that the chicks were getting feathers and were starting to fly. |
 |
| For the morning and afternoon classes we placed a few chicks on the table (with newspaper underneath, you know why!) and a laundry basket on top so they could see the chick and gave them paper and crayons. We asked them to draw what they saw. Those were the only instructions. It is best to leave this type of activity as open-ended as possible. |
 |
| Here the chicks are patiently waiting as the children start the process of drawing what they see. |
 |
| Busy hands, busy chicks. |
 |
You can see that different children are at different stages of their writing abilities, but they are all deeply involved in the process. It IS NOT about the results, it is about them being excited, involved and proud of their efforts that count.
Notice how the children are working side by side without comparison or competition. Each child could tell us about their picture and what it represented. Even though the drawing may not have much meaning to you, it has a lot of meaning to the child. Avoid the standard "that is beautiful" and use more meaningful statements and questions such as "what do you like best about your picture?", "why did you pick those colors for your drawing?", "tell me about this part of your drawing?" and/or "what is you favorite part about your drawing?". This creates children that are intrinsically motivated to do work and are not working just to get peer or adult praise. These type of comments and questions show the children you are really connected and encourage children to do work because they enjoy it and find their work meaningful. This leads to self-motivation and can help keep children from becoming acceptance seekers (which can lead to giving in to peer pressure as they get older). |
 |
| During our meeting time at carpet we looked closely at the chicks and compared how many toes they had to how many toes we had. We took off our shoes and counted. We looked at a chick and counted. At first they thought the chicks had three toes, but when they looked closer (on closer investigation is the vocabulary we used with them) they realized that the chicks actually had FOUR toes. One toe is smaller than the others and is hidden in the back of the foot for balance. This child remembered that detail and added it into his drawing of the chick. |
 |
| This child is proudly showing the chicks their portraits. A masterpiece I would say, don't you agree? |
 |
| This child not only started a drawing, but also wanted to write the baby chicks name for him. Here she is "reading" baby chicks name to him. She then very proudly hung the picture up on the wall (but then took it down and wanted to take it home). She independently went and found the foam letters and started writing with crayons and gluing the foam letters on her paper. This was not part of the lesson, but she felt inspired to do this. She was allowed, encouraged and supported to explore letters and incorporate her ideas into the "art" lesson. This is one of the reasons we try to leave the activities open-ended and not give too many instructions. The children need room to grow and explore, and by expecting every child to turn out cookie cutter type projects (where every project looks the same and it is obvious the teacher did most of the work) it hampers the children's growth and development and can actually keep them from learning as fast as they are naturally capable. |
This video shows them exploring the chicks and looking at their wings. They are also just enjoying being kids and spending time just basking in the wonder of holding something so much smaller than them.
