King Summer

We wrapped up our school year with a reading of the "King Summer" story from the Enki Kindergarten Nature Stories collection. After recalling the story the next day, we painted it. (I just love how I can use these seasonal stories year after year as a tradition, doing more and more with them each year!) The details of what we did are below, J's painting is above, Zoo Boy's in the middle, mine on the bottom. This story is so perfect for finishing the school year out, because of the rainbow imagery -- sort of an "over the rainbow" kind of thing, an end and yet a beginning, and very cool because the song we used for transition into story work time this year was "look to the rainbow" where we should "follow the fellow who follows a dream". And of course, incredibly seasonally appropriate, what with the solstice and all. Ahhh, I love integrated, holistic learning!!

So here's how we did the led painting:

I recited the first story verse. I began painting the top of the paper with a red arc. I talked about the birds flying in the sky, filling the air with color, and I talked about bright red Cardinals piping their cheery tune as they flew. Then we washed our brushes and loaded them with yellow paint, then talked about the bees who also filled the air with color as they buzzed about under the yellow sun. They couldn't fly as high as the birds, but stayed closer to the earth. While saying all that, we painted a yellow arc in the middle of our paper, leaving a white space between it and the red arc above it. Then as we washed our brushes, I recited the middle story verse, about how hot and oppressive it was getting. We loaded our brushes with blue. I talked about the clouds gathering and the rain pouring forth as we painted a blue arc at the bottom of our page -- the rain ran all over the ground, covering the grass and refreshing all with it's cooling moisture. Then we washed our brushes again, and I gave them fresh rinse water in their cups. This time, we loaded our brushes only with water. I talked about how the cool water awakened the dozing birds and bees, and they flew out of their nesting places and celebrated in the sky together. As I was saying this, we brought our brushes into the red and yellow at the edges of those arcs, and blended them together in the white space between them to created an orange arc. Then we washed our brushes again, and we loaded them up with water again, and I talked about how the frogs emerged from the mud where they'd been dozing in the hot day to hop about again, and how the water refreshed the green, green grass. While I talked, we brought our brushes into the bottom of the yellow arc and into the top of the blue arc, and combined them in the white space to paint a green arc. As we finished up, I recited the last story verse, which talks about it ending with a rainbow, as we worked just a little bit of red paint into the very bottom center of the blue arc to create a bit of purple. The kids were not the least bit surprised to discover that they had painted a rainbow. "Cool," said Zoo Boy.

We'll be using the verse version of the story for handwriting practice work over the next month, keeping our work both "lite" and seasonal and yet still connected to our school work.

Cool.