We finally found out the Rats’ plan: they want to grow their own food so they don’t have to steal it anymore. We found this out in the main hall of the rats, which was made out of a cave. Timo pointed out how hard it must be for rats to make a plow, but Sokrates explained it must be because they want really badly to grow their own food. Yianni added that it made sense, since they know that it is bad to steal. This wasn’t exactly the plan we were expecting them to have, but we are all curious now to see how they do it.
Based off the cavernous main hall in the story, we discussed what we knew about caves. Then, using whatever material they wanted, they built their own caves. Timo made sure that his cave had a back entrance, just like the rats’. Sokrates added that, as we learned in the video, there was a bear in the cave. Tove hid toys in the bottom chamber of the cave. Paolo attempted to build a cave in the sand but pointed out how much tougher it was than building in the blocks. Niki decided to build under the table, since that provided a strong ceiling and she just needed to build the walls. It was a pretty incredible day of constructions.
We wrapped up our resist art projects by painting on our glued pictures from yesterday. When she came in, Gia was concerned that I flattened out the pictures by stacking them, asking if they would stick together. Paolo wasn’t sure why there were bubbles in the glue, but guessed it had something to do with how they dried. Niki was sad her glue turned clear when it dried, since the color would have shown up better on the white glue. Anja thought that the dried glue felt squishy, while Bisola appreciated that she could wipe the paint off the dried glue. Rebecca really liked the rainbow she made, while Jerome appreciated the way the yellow really showed up against his paper. This was an interesting progression, which I really enjoyed talking the class through. Hopefully, this will encourage them to experiment with mixing media in art, something that can create interesting effects.
Today I checked in with Yianni: “I really liked it when we were painting. The glue from yesterday left little lines of glue when they dried. The paint didn’t like the glue, so if you painted after it dried, it looked funny.” I’m glad he got the idea of a resist and enjoyed the process. Have a great weekend everyone!
