Lunchtime Conversation--the Best!

What's Inside?

     Sometimes, things just happen.  There was a beautiful, but slightly broken, gourd on the playground.  We brought it into the classroom after recess.  It was just about time for lunch, so we sat at our tables.

     Just for the fun of it, we tried to guess what was inside our cracked gourd.  The gourd was broken; we would be able to take a good peek inside if pulled at the cracked opening.  Morah Susan held it up high, very high.  We could see the outside of the gourd, but not the inside.

     We went around the room asking all our Kitah Gimmel members to take a guess about the inside of the gourd.  The Morahs figured on some logical answers, but it turned out each and every child was in a very funny, and fun, mood.

     One of the girls guessed first. She said, "There's a crab inside!"  Maybe, but probably not, and all the children appreciated the humor in this response.  Everyone smiled, and then added their own silly answer.  "Its a snake!"  "There's a cockroach in there!" Later, the silliness increased, "No, there's a turtle inside!"

     After a while, we really went to town with this.  "There's a whale inside! A big mama whale!"  "No, an elephant!"  "A gorilla!" "No, a teeny-weeny little elephant!"

     One of the last responses was, "There's a monkey inside!"  This led to the group singing one of their favorite songs, "Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed."  The song ended with mama monkey putting all the monkeys back to bed.

     Not to be outdone, the song took a new turn:  one of the boys declared, "I have a joke!"  He then sang his own made-up song, "Three Little Elephants Jumping on a Bed."  It was the perfect take-off of the monkey song that we had just finished.  His song ended with all the elephants going off to jail!

     Then, we looked inside the gourd.  No crabs, turtles, whales, monkeys or elephants.  We saw the seeds and the fibrous insides of the gourd.  Reality may be fascinating, but our imaginations are truly entertaining!

     Needless to say, the Morahs enjoyed the lunchtime conversation!

Morah Susan and Morah Sterny

Gourd to Know . . .

      We are not going to describe our Kitah Gimmel gourd still-life illustrations in this blog posting.  We've done that already, in the documentation outside our room.  We've written how the children used a variety of media to create their gourd studies.  Instead, let's talk about what comes after . . . and what came before, the creation of our colorful works of art.

           After our gourd paintings were dry and hanging up on display, we used smaller pieces of gourds for a math lesson.  During Circle Time, we used one-to-one correspondence to count our smaller gourd pieces.  The pieces that we didn't need remained in the dried gourd-top.  One side of the gourd-top is very smooth and orange, the underside is rough is white.  We learned that some people use gourd pieces as drinking cups and plates.

           Above:  Some of the fall items available in our room.  

We used these gourds and dried corn for our observational drawings--our still-life illustrations.  Then, we played "What's Missing" with four of the items.  We use our new vocabulary word, gourd, and we practice our recall skills in order to play this game.

          During the summer, I had visited the North Georgia Mountains.  While there, I stopped off at the Gourd Museum.  Yes indeed, there is a Gourd Museum, only two hours away from our Atlanta neighborhood.  There were several baskets of gourds.  There were also eating utensils made from gourds, as well as musical instruments.  If you'd like a bowl or a sitar made from a gourd, this Museum is the place for you.

      Above, a row of baskets, chockful of gourds.  Below, I'm wearing a gourd mask.

 Above:  remembering the process of creating our still-life paintings; below, some of the children's  renditions of our gourd collection.

     

Feel free to visit our room to take a peek at our artwork!

Fondly,

Morah Susan and Morah Sterny