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Avocado Encounters – Extended
I do love how easily it marks up. I love how I can manipulate charcoal in ways that make me feel like an artist. I’ve never really paid any attention to shading in order to make a particular thing I’m drawing look round or to account for the light and think about shadows. In fact I’ve never really noticed shadows from an artistic perspective before. I definitely never noticed that an avocado seed can actually cast a shadow over the rest of the fruit depending on the light. I’ve never taken any art classes, but charcoal has a certain way about it that offers me the illusion that maybe I…
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The Avocado Seed
The tiniest of moments happened today and I almost missed it. I was waving goodbye and I’ll see you next time when I noticed the small commotion. The children were sitting in their seats for lunch while their chili was being served. Ryan, the wonderful cook, provided all the necessary toppings: sour cream, shredded cheese and some whole avocado to slice up. Once the avocado was sliced open the children were excited to see the pit, they called it the ‘avocado seed’. It was passed around, so each child had a chance to look at it and observe its special markings. How easy it would have been to just throw…
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Trees of Life
A colleague this week reminded me of being a child. She reminded me to think about how I learned about trees as a young girl in school. She remembered learning about trees in a way that was all about what the tree does for us humans. She suggested it was a silly example of thinking about how we centre children and, by extension, the rest of humanity. I was reminded about how I was taught about trees and it was similar to her experience. Trees give US life. Trees give off oxygen for US to breathe; they remove CO2 from the air WE breathe. They clear pollutants for US to…
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Slowing Down and Embracing the Silence
Working with charcoal and paper was a beautiful, albeit messy, way to slow down and pay attention for everyone. I noticed moments of true connection between the children and educators that I did not necessarily notice before the introduction of the paper and charcoal. I noticed Katlyn slow down and spend serious time quietly making strong connections with the children while they engaged with charcoal. There were beautiful connections between educator and children as they explored how charcoal made marks, how it made dust, how it was messy, but that messy bit on our hands could be turned into new mark making. At one moment it was so calm and…