Plant life in the Delaware watershed

Today was amazing! We had a storm and a windy morning that transformed the world into a carpet of leaves, a perfect morning for our lesson on plant life in the Delaware watershed. Before coming to Comly this morning I took a stroll and selected a variety of leaves to bring in with me to share. We started class talking about the storm and the wind and asked the kids if they had noticed anything different this morning. We looked at the globe to see where we were and why we have season changes. I told them about my leaf collecting and said obviously if I picked them up this morning they must all be plants that grow near the Delaware River! With the kids in pairs we handed out a leaf to each pair and asked them if they could identify it by comparing it to drawings of labeled leaves on the overhead projector. Most of them were quite successful, and it gave us a chance to talk about some of our art elements like line and shape as well as have some compare and contrast practice.


the collaborative background cut and pinned

I had brought in the background for our collaborative piece, which is starting off as a large river model of the Delaware in felt fabric. The kids identified the source and mouth and tributary as well as the names of the states the river passes through. The model at the moment just shows land and water, and the kids correctly guessed that we needed some plants next!

I brought in green fabric and fabric pastels to do leaf rubbings for some color and texture. Cindy had lots of texture plates for the kids to use for this project. This makes our 3rd printing technique (silkscreen, stamping, and now rubbings). I showed an example and asked the class how they thought I'd gotten the leaf images on there- it was interesting to hear some of the responses (paint the leaf and press it on! Trace it! Silkscreen it!). When they were ready each table come back to select their leaves and colors. Each student printed 2 leaves using 2 colors. As they finished I quickly ironed the oils out to heatset. Ironing between paper meant there was also a resulting transfer print of the image to the paper.
While I worked with each table to do leaf rubbings Cindy had the students work on a poetry and then a reading piece on the same theme of Fall leaves. Their poetry style was to write an "apology poem" much like William Carlos Williams' poem "This is Just to Say":

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

She gave them some different ways to say "I apologize", and shared 3 elements of an apology poem, including the apology, an explanation of what happened, and a reason why. The children imagined an apology to a fallen leaf, and I'm so happy that they all had a dry fallen leaf in front of them while they did this- the result of a morning impulse inspired by a windy autumn day. I suggested to Cindy that she might want to use the iron transfer papers with their poems somehow for their final copy.