The kindergarten kids loved hearing my stories about the trouble-making red-faced monkeys in Delhi. The monkeys broke into the kitchen and destroyed the salad, stole Marilyn's cashews and dried fruit, followed me ominously when I was with Richard who carried oranges, and ran in the main road alongside traffic near the National Museum. The girls also enjoyed hearing about how these creatures plague the American School so much that sometimes the school hires men to bring huge but friendly black-faced langur monkeys to the yard on leashes to walk around and scare the red guys away.
We looked at pictures of the monkeys and talked about what we saw. I asked a few questions out loud and let children shout out their answers, I didn't dwell on 'right' or 'wrong' answers, but wanted to make sure they were noticing and thinking about what they were seeing. I asked 'are their eyes close together or far apart?' 'Are their mouths smiling lines or straight lines?' etc before inviting them to make these marker and colored pencil creations. They were challenged to make parts of the monkey touch the edges of the paper (and were allowed to say 'bump!' whenever their markers hit the edge, which is a great way to encourage bold drawings). Colored pencil choices were limited to a few different browns, pinks, and reds so the artists could have some freedom but not get too far off task. In subsequent lessons early finishers have been asked to make pictures in their sketchbooks of monkeys being bad. They love that assignment.
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