Do you remember way back, when we began to explore the idea of “You be you and I be I?” What a long journey it’s been!
Since we began, we’ve explored looking at, creating, and reading faces. Exploring how cameras work and dabbling in our own photography to highlight what we noticed in others and our environment. Visiting the museum, we explored looking closely at faces in Larry Fink’s photographs to observe feelings and of course, found ways to notice our own feelings and that of friends.
Through these interests, we’ve discovered a little bit about ourselves and about others. This work is life long and will continue even after our year together is long gone.
For this moment in time however, we wanted to have the children capture how they see themselves now. Creating self-portraits has given the children another way to see their eyes, nose, mouth and the rest of their face and to figure out how it all fits together. This work has allowed the children to continue to develop a sense of self and to reflect on themselves from the perspective of somebody else as they view themselves in a mirror or photograph.
Beginning with creating their very own color palette of paints, we took note of what made each of us, “me.”
“I think my lips are a little reddish brownish.” -Case
“Hmmm…maybe some yellow and white. It’s turning different. There! That’s more like it.” -Addie creates her skin color
“A little hazely brown.” -Charlotte describes her eye color
Tracing their faces using a photograph projected onto our easel, the children discovered more about details that made them unique.
“I remember once I had a chocolate mustache!” -Julia
“I even did my nose holes! I did a smile! I did it over my shadow!” -Luca
“I’m making a lot of hair!” -Ruthie
“We’re like Artists!” -Travers
“Just some curls here.” -Rosalie
“I need my neck!” -Caroline
“My hair is blonde, red, and brown.”-Charlie N.
