Shapes and "The Enormous Crocodile" July 22, 2001 Class Three Session One StoryArtPlay 'Horse and Lightening' by Sage As the children assembled, eager to begin, Zoe pulled out a dry erase board and said, "I see we have some new children here today, but many of you were here last week. What was it we explored last week?" Silence followed. "I said there were "Ziggly zaggly..., and T-intersection... and snail rollup... Sage piped up, and said that we had been exploring LINES. Zoe proceeded to explain that today, we were going to play with shapes and that shapes can be made from lines. The children proceeded to call out shapes while she drew them on the dry erase board. She put the random shapes together to form characters in the story she was about to tell. Josephine's Bird Lyle the crocodile puppet (the class mascot) suddenly announced that he had a story to tell the children. (Lyle is the kindest crocodile and the sweetest crocodile, and he loves to give soft kisses. Several children wanted a soft kiss from Lyle. This helped to establish the foundation for a safe space before Zoe proceeded with the story.) She then told the story that Lyle's great great grandfather had "told him" about the enormous crocodile. ("The Enormous Crocodile" is a story by Raold Dahl about a crocodile who encounters many different animals in the jungle.) The children thoroughly enjoyed the story. Zoe went on to take out precut paper shapes arranging them on a piece of paper to show a scene from the story. 'Two Alligators Climbing on Dirt' by Torrin Another piece of plain paper was laid on top and an oil pastel crayon was pushed over the entire top paper revealing the cutouts below. The children found this magical. They were given stiff paper, scissors, plain paper, oil pastels and crayons and they went off with their parents to work on their own creations. Many had to learn the skill of pushing the crayon with enough pressure and direction. For those with a very light touch, oil pastels gave success. Those with a heavy touch used wax crayons, and all came up with delightful, explorative works of art.