Open Ended Work/Play and Joy

This image made me smile today.

Despite the labels, and theories and processes we may suggest and adopt or impose or reject, this is the good stuff : the joy of exploration.

Making : Smelly Pictures

Getting children to engage with new foods and being "adventurous eaters" is one of the main things I'm doing in my work.  Gardens are wonderful, and seeing something go from seed to seedling to plant to edible plant is pretty magical - often magical enough to make even the pickiest of eaters open to harvesting the plant and putting it in their mouth.

It isn't too often that a garden program for kids has children in the same garden long enough to see the fruits of their labor.  So we need to find even more ways to engage the senses, to expose kids to new ideas, flavors, and tastes...and one activity that had mountains of success in engaging the senses was what I call spice collages, and what the campers lovingly called smelly pictures.

The concept is simple, really, and I think it counts as open-ended.  We used paintbrushes to apply white glue in a design or picture (or whatever, really), and then sprinkled spices on top.  It is the old glitter project, but with smell instead of sparkle.

Throughout the process, children are opening their senses to some pretty bold items, including cumin, cinnamon, mint, and anise.  I thought about making spice kits that would allow the picture to smell a bit more cohesive - Thai, Indian, Italian - the possibilities are endless!

We offered that they could add leaves from the herb spiral as well, and some did do that.  The dried spices will last a while on the paper, though, and the fresh ones will dry over time, I suppose.

With younger children, we used glue sticks and put the spices into salt shakers for easy application!  This is something that is easy to execute, and is a great step in learning more about food literacy at any age.  I hope you'll give it a try!

Garden Art

(Ginette Lapalme, via Collage Collage)

I saw this image a few weeks ago, and right away, I knew we had to do some natural-item painting at the garden with the campers.  One morning, a few raindrops were coming down, so paper-making wasn't going to fit the bill, and that activity was quickly replaced with stick and rock painting.

We offered a variety of objects for the kids to paint, and they also had the opportunity to look for their own items.  We ended up with pieces of scrap wood, bricks, cement blocks...you name it!

Most everyone painted multiple objects, and the next day, they found homes for their items in the garden.  They are hidden under squash leaves, peeking out of wood chip paths, and woven into the mesh on the chicken coop.

I love the bright, neon colors of Lapalme's sticks, and I'd love to offer different kinds of paint, brushes, and perhaps some ways to prompt the kids to add textures.

Art Department Rules

Sister Corita Kent's rules for the art studio, via Brainpickings.

Garden Paper

Teaching outdoors has caused me to stretch my creativity this summer, and I'm so happy with the results of some of the things that the children have done.  This past week, we incorporated our naturalist intelligences with the arts with some garden paper making.

I have made paper with children in the past, but it gets easier each time!  You start to understand the nuances of the texture and the pulp, and all 24 children were able to pull a piece of paper that looked like paper.  In my past experience, when there were holes and bumps and unevenness in the pieces, they were just as loved.  The process of making paper is never disappointing, and with dry, warm weather like we had in Washington this past week, it was a great outdoor activity.

We made a connection to the garden by adding some beautiful stuff, not only for our eyes, but for our noses, too!  Flower petals, lavender buds, snips of sage, and even some little broccoli buds made it into the pieces.  Each child pressed their harvest into their piece after it had been couched and sponged, while it was still damp.  A few petals flew away in the wind, but in general, most of the things were still embedded in the paper!  If children were doing this in a smaller container of water and had their own pulp, the natural items could be added right to the water.

If you want to learn more about paper making, you can read about it or you can see a visual tutorial.

Art Dice, Drawing Practice

The children loved playing with art dice last week.  Pretty self-explanatory!  The idea originally came from Tinkerlab.

There are so many possibilities for these little wooden cubes: I'm imagining a game where the dice have different facial features drawn on and they make a monster face, and a second die has numbers to prompt how many of the facial feature to draw.  While we were working I thought about using these dice to make  maps, with lines to represent roads, for example.  

So simple, and so fun!

treasures and pirates

Today at the maker's table, the children worked on a treasure map.  We had the paper strips, tape, crayons, and markers to work with.  When we gathered together in the morning, I told the children that we should try to make a map using those things, and I asked what they knew about maps. Conversation immediately turned to pirates and treasure.  Three children started out helping with the map and they stayed for about 10 minutes, adding the features in the pictures below.  There were also chipmunks, babies, and cords added.  

taping down roads

adding new kinds of roads

more roads, an ocean, and an airport

making pirates

and adding them to the treasure map.

I chose this prompt because of some map-making I've seen here and there online lately, and also because of the interest the children have in using a map during dramatic play.  It has been a challenge for me to document and make connections across days and weeks in this setting, but explorations like this seem really positive because the children engage in something very open-ended, and I learn a lot about them as they talk and work.  Our plan is to add to it tomorrow - the tape was a hit, but we'll also offer more materials, and do more to get conversation started about what this map can be for.

Colorful Circles

A two day creation; everyone helped.  Tracing, tracing attempts, tempera cakes, spilling water, ripping paper, laughing, more painting, more spilling water, much more ripping - it really is all about the process.  But the product is on the wall.

As a side note, I LOVE Tempera Cakes.  I cannot recommend them enough!  I bought one tray to try them out with the children, and it went really well.  In the future, I'd like to use ones that are just the cakes to mix and match in the tray so that children and teachers can pick and choose a few colors rather than have all of them.  But these were great.  

Cloud Appreciation Society

The Cloud Appreciation Society seems like it could have a link with classrooms. 

Perhaps I'm partial because the weather in Brussels has gotten so nice - it has been a warm, sunny weekend to end a warm sunny week, during which we went to the forest three times and kept our classroom windows open. I can imagine children photographing clouds, and using the photo gallery "Clouds That Look Like Things" to share their findings.  What an amazing oral language activity, too, for children to have conversations about what they see and to talk about similarities and differences between the different kinds of clouds. 

I think that cloud photographs would be a great starter for sketchbooks one morning - every child feels confident enough to draw clouds, and some children might even enjoy drawing an object as a cloud.

Stop Animation

Stop animation by fifth graders at the school where I teach, along with a visiting artist, made over the course of one week.  I don't know much about this medium, but this clearly took time, planning, and collaboration.  What an interesting result!  I'm sure these children will remember this for years to come.

A Working Atelier

Images from the Williamsburg Northside Preschool in Brooklyn.  See more on their flickr page.

Ask An Atelierista

I have been looking at the flickr photos from Williamsburg Northside Preschool for some time now - they come through with photos from my contacts.  There is some really lovely work happening there, and I'm going to make this a two part post, because I sense a lot of images coming your way.

I came across an interview with Atelierista Kara Canal, whom I assume is responsible for the lovely atelier work at Williamsburg Northside. This is the kind of work I wish I saw in art studios - children taking available materials and just seeing what happens.  Why are children being restricted with work that is about the product, rather than the process?

 

There is sketchbook work happening here, too, and i'm inspired to vary the materials the children are using in their sketchbooks in the morning.  This is how many working artists organize their minds and ideas, so why not children?

Tomorrow...more images from the Williamsburg Northside Atelier.

Art for Haiti

After the earthquake in Haiti, one of the Kindergarten teachers organized a fundraiser for our Early Childhood Center.  Children were asked to make a piece of art in the Haitian Naïf style, and the pieces were displayed and then purchased by donation by families at the school.

We spent a week on the project, starting by talking about were Haiti is, what an earthquake is, and what happened.  I chose not to show them images - some parents did at home - but I did not do that in the classroom.  The children talked about things falling down, and their initial reaction was to send glue and tape to fix the houses and the schools.  A part of me wishes that I could have supported their exploration of help and charity, but we were getting ready for the February break, and the project that was organized was a great way for them to get involved right away.  Perhaps we will be able to explore service learning later.

We looked at many paintings and talked about the themes and the colors, and then the children glued small copies of the paintings that they liked into their sketchbooks.  We used our sketchbooks all week as our place to get ready, and late in the week, the children chose a painting that they had liked all week and drew with black pen.  The idea was to help keep them on theme and have the artwork nearby, so we could talk about colors and objects and what, perhaps, to draw.  Every child's piece came out original, and reflected their personal style, with inspiration from the Haitian artwork.  I'm grateful that we were able to help in some way, and that the children were able to have this experience.

 

  

  

  

 

Sketchbooks Mid-Year

We are mid-way through the year, and I sat with the sketchbooks this afternoon to reflect.  What are the children doing?  Is it worth it to have the children working in their sketchbooks every day?  What are they doing?  Has it changed?

In my opinion, it has been very positive.  Some children draw for one minute, some prefer to draw for five.  Five minutes is the maximum time we have - but children are welcome to revisit their sketchbooks anytime they want to during the day.  I think it is an especially positive activity for the children who do not choose to draw during the day.  I am thinking of one boy in particular who does not choose to draw, and typically avoids fine motor activity.  This is a time for him to show us something in this drawing medium - no matter how small it is, or what it is.

Some children have filled four books, some are still on their first.  I have not been as good recently about giving them different mediums.  They have many different drawing tools, but I think we should be including more photography, more collage, more paint, and other mediums for expression.  This does take planning ahead.  I realize that more now that I looked at 13 sketchbooks that only have drawing.  I did find one little surprise -  one girl had taped in a drawing that she had made on a long strip of purple construction paper.  It was piece that she independently chose to add to her cumulative work, and I found that refreshing.

Now, I am thinking about next steps for sketchbooks...another thing to add to the list!

Before :
Our Sketchbook Adventure
Sketchbooks and Leaves
Sketchbooks, Six Weeks In...