Our nature story (read by the fire on Friday night, with plenty of popcorn to eat, of course!) for the week was "Autumn's Warm Blanket", from the
Enki Education 1st Grade Nature Story collection. For artistic digestion on Saturday, we decided to put on a play about the story. The main characters were Black-Eyed Susan (played by J) and Yarrow, (played by Zoo Boy).
The kids were really excited at the thought of putting on a play, and worked diligently on their costumes. For Susan's petals, J cut out construction paper petals and taped them onto a head band. Zoo Boy glued crumpled up bits of
Kleenex on a piece of construction paper to create the small white flower clusters of Yarrow, and attached the entire cluster to a headband. They then cut out leaves to hold, of each flower's type.
Then we worked on the scenery. The story takes place at a field's edge, and Zoo Boy decided to draw the field, while J decided to draw a tree whose leaves would fall upon the sleeping flowers at the end of Autumn. We decided that autumn-colored silks would serve as the falling leaves. I noted that J used the edges of his block crayons to created the trunk and branches, then switched to stick crayons for the leaves, all on his own without any input from me (other than suggestion holding the paper the long way). I drew a field along with Zoo Boy so that he'd have an example to follow. He asked for a little bit of help (hand-over-hand coloring) getting started with his drawing, but for the most part he did it himself.
Our stage is set. It was Zoo Boy's idea to use a sheet as our "curtain", and he selected a yellow one from his bed, as it was the color of the yellow Autumn fields. On the right is Zoo Boy's field, in the middle is J's tree, and on the left is my field. We held a dress
rehearsal, then pinned up the "curtain" and waited for The Map Man to get home and serve as an audience.
The final scene -- Susan and Yarrow asleep for the winter under a colorful blanket of autumn leaves. The show was a huge success and drew rave reviews from the critics. Rest assured, this will not be our last production.
Our nature story (read by the fire on Friday night, with plenty of popcorn to eat, of course!) for the week was "Autumn's Warm Blanket", from the Enki Education 1st Grade Nature Story collection. For artistic digestion on Saturday, we decided to put on a play about the story. The main characters were Black-Eyed Susan (played by J) and Yarrow, (played by Zoo Boy).
The kids were really excited at the thought of putting on a play, and worked diligently on their costumes. For Susan's petals, J cut out construction paper petals and taped them onto a head band. Zoo Boy glued crumpled up bits of Kleenex on a piece of construction paper to create the small white flower clusters of Yarrow, and attached the entire cluster to a headband. They then cut out leaves to hold, of each flower's type.
Then we worked on the scenery. The story takes place at a field's edge, and Zoo Boy decided to draw the field, while J decided to draw a tree whose leaves would fall upon the sleeping flowers at the end of Autumn. We decided that autumn-colored silks would serve as the falling leaves. I noted that J used the edges of his block crayons to created the trunk and branches, then switched to stick crayons for the leaves, all on his own without any input from me (other than suggestion holding the paper the long way). I drew a field along with Zoo Boy so that he'd have an example to follow. He asked for a little bit of help (hand-over-hand coloring) getting started with his drawing, but for the most part he did it himself.
Our stage is set. It was Zoo Boy's idea to use a sheet as our "curtain", and he selected a yellow one from his bed, as it was the color of the yellow Autumn fields. On the right is Zoo Boy's field, in the middle is J's tree, and on the left is my field. We held a dress rehearsal, then pinned up the "curtain" and waited for The Map Man to get home and serve as an audience.
The final scene -- Susan and Yarrow asleep for the winter under a colorful blanket of autumn leaves. The show was a huge success and drew rave reviews from the critics. Rest assured, this will not be our last production.
1 comment:
What a sweet play! I'm totally impressed with how intently the boys worked on the project and their creative choice of materials. Great job :0)
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