After finding calm, I ask the students to place a hand on their chest, their stomach, or both to feel the breath move through the body. It is really beautiful to watch these small humans breathing in a peaceful, quiet way after a busy day at school.
After that, we returned to our imaginary adventure in the Amazon rainforest! Instead of taking a kayak to the center of the rainforest, we flew on a Seaplane in Warrior III or Airplane Pose. First, we sat in chair pose, buckled our seat belts, then we were off! We once again saw the kapok tree and entered into tree pose. We saw a jaguar, a red howler monkey, and a poison arrow frog, moving our bodies in the same way that these animals might. During this adventure, the last animal we explored was a spider. This was a huge hit with the children as they got to walk like a spider and even spin a web!
After returning to our TIS classroom we were inspired to make artwork. Once again, we observed the artwork of Henri Rousseau for ideas. The students took a look at the horizon lines they drew last class and began painting the color they wanted for the sky and the ground. We are building these pieces of artwork, starting with the background. I asked the children to really think about the time of day and the weather in their picture. As a result, we had several interesting stormy pictures with moody, dark skies alongside sunsets and nighttime scenes.
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| Tropical Forest with Apes and Snakes by Henri Rousseau |
A few students finished painting their backgrounds early and had the opportunity to draw animals for the middle ground and foreground of their pictures. I was impressed with the amount of detail the students added to their observational animal drawings! I supplied several pictures of some of the animals we've imagined at the rainforest.
Here are a few photos of the students in action creating artwork!
