This week we have been exploring waves in the ocean through our literature, art, water play, and other experiences in our prekindergarten classroom….
If you are ready to take your students on a picture book walk, then I highly recommend the picture book “Wave” by Suzy Lee. “Wave” is a book with no words so when Mr. Hayden sat down to read it with our class, he invited the children to look closely at each page of the book and tell the story in their own words…
The book begins with a picture of a little girl looking out over the ocean watching the waves come in and out from the shore. As Mr. Hayden opened each new page, our students began discussing what they saw happening on the page. Â It was interesting because our girls tended to assume the role of the little girl in the book and told the story from her perspective; “I am running away from the waves!” or “I am mad at the waves!” or “Now I am playing in the waves!”….
At the end of our story, the little girl in the book gets soaked when a huge wave comes and lands right over the top of her…
You will notice that through out the story, the pictures are illustrated in two distinct different colors. The waves are illustrated through different shades of blue and white while the little girl, the seagulls, and anything else on the beach is illustrated through different shades of black (pencil or charcoal type drawings)…
After the children went on their picture walk with Mr. Hayden and told their own story of each page of the book, Mr. Hayden invited the children to notice how the book was illustrated in this unique way. Â Then we invited the children to explore the story again by creating their own picture on the easel with different shades of blue paint and a pencil…
And this is where my story begins. You see, when I planned for this activity, I was imagining the children simply painting and drawing wavy lines. Â But the story had a much bigger impression on the children than I had anticipated. The children started by drawing their own scene with the pencil…
The scene on the easel was similar to the illustrations in the book. The children used the pencil to draw a person and any other detail they wished to add…
And then the children began to add waves with the different shades of blue paint…
The children swished their brush up and down and around towards the person they drew because that is what the wave in the book did…
As this little girl painted, I could hear her saying things like, “Look Out! Here comes the wave!” and then the ‘water’ would swoosh right over her drawings…
As she told her story at the easel, her characters began to disappear under the large waves until all the drawings were completely ‘under the shades of blue water’…
If it wasn’t for having listened as the children painted or having these photos taken as the children painted, then it would be easy to walk by the easel at the end of each child’s turn and think  to yourself, “Wow, another blue blob!”…
Each child told a story that ended with a large blue blob in the center of their paper but underneath that large blue blob was a story of a mommy or a child enjoying a conversation or a dance or fight with a wave that grew bigger and bigger until everyone got all wet…
So when that big blue blob of paint comes home to mom and dad, they will know (or be told by me) that this was a story and not a painting and perhaps their child will be ready to tell them the story too!
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