report from Ella's teacher

This morning outside Ella found the basket of sidewalk chalk. She collected some that she wanted to use in a small dish. When she came up to me she said that she wanted to draw a boy. I started talking with her about different parts of the body and the shapes she could draw for them. She said that boy had a triangle head and that the girl could have a circle head. I then continued talking about different parts of the body, like the body and the arms. I would ask Ella how many arms there were, if they were big or small, and other descriptive questions. She was able to supply answers and persist through her task of drawing people. The only problem she ran into was when the body of the boy hit the edge of the sidewalk and she said that she did not have enough space. To solve that problem she moved to another place and started drawing again.


Ella was learning a lot of things while working on her drawings. As we were talking Ella was developing her understanding of shapes and how they can be used to represent things in a drawing. She was developing confidence in her own abilities to draw pictures that she wants. When we were discussing sizes and number of parts she was working on comparisons on size as well as her counting skills. She was making connections between what she knows and how to represent it in a drawing.