Hi all,
This week’s post is a bit of a long one as it is an inside look into what happens within our Atelier. These are our adult supported/guided planned art activities. So firstly, a bit of background: The Atelier is a large part of the Reggio Emilia approach, if you have read my previous post outlining it you may know a little about it already ( if you wish to know more then please head back to the post regarding the Reggio Emilia approach). We gain much inspiration from this part of the philosophy. Each week we plan according to the children’s interests based upon the Reggio Emilia ‘unwritten curriculum’. This is an unofficial guide based upon children’s psychology and development, in how they learn about themselves and the wider world.
To begin with the approach focuses on identity and ‘ourselves’, we explore this by making self portraits and looking at ourselves in the mirror, exploring how we can make our bodies move and how we are similar and different to others. We then explore the idea of others further by exploring role play and how we can become someone new ( and still be the same person at the same time) we do this by using face paints, masks and further discussing how we differ and are similar to others. We then work on the idea of building relationships and friendships to start understanding those around us, their needs, likes and emotions. This is done through a lot of group activities with a large emphasis on teamwork. We then continue this teamwork to explore the world around us (in our case Sittingbourne) and how the children in our care see the world. This then continues to the wider world and then the world that ‘could be’; the idea of using imagination to create endless possibilities and experiences. I will be sharing our journey through this curriculum with you every now and then through this blog in the hopes that it can inspire others and provide a sneak peek into our day to day practice.
Me Myself and I
Before Christmas we did a lot of work on self-portraits, using a variety of medias, we continued this exploration by face painting and paintings inspired by Andy Warhol portraits. We painted over our own pictures to change the colours of our features. Firstly we did this individually and then we did a collage type piece inspired by the artist. We explored painting on ourselves on a mirror and explored songs relating to the body (e.g. head shoulders knees and toes).
Masks
After Christmas there was a strong interest in colour mixing and blending so we extended this by introducing different ways to explore mixing colours. Firstly, inspired by Japanese water marbling we tried to marble paint and oil, the children loved exploring how the materials mixed with each other however the printing aspect of this did not work well. Continued by this interest and inspiration we started to explore colour mixing using watered down paints dropped onto paper plates. We explored how the drops fell and what happened when another colour was added, we observed the marbling that occurred and explored how to change the pattern with tools and our fingers.
We then used these plates as a base to create masks to explore changing our identities and learning about others. We drew patterns on the masks with charcoal and then covered these patterns with glue. We then shook salt over the top to stick to the glue. Once dried we added water colours to the salt. We observed the watercolour spreading along the salt, experimenting with different colours and watching them mix to create a new one. This added a new texture and different dimension to our masks. We then used these to become new characters within our role play. Some children decided to decorate them further adding collage pieces and decorations.
Myself and others
“ I am feeling green”
The children are still showing a large interest in colour mixing recently and absolutely love paint! We originally planned this activity to be inspired by a story (Cave baby) but the children have loved dancing recently (often requesting the lights off and the twinkly lights to be on) so we used this to work in a large group with paint as the media, inspired by Kandinsky. We set up a large table in the middle of the room covered in paper, we have a lot of children with rotation schemas (love anything that rotates – think train wheels, pushchairs, spinning round and round in circles) so we first encouraged children to move around the table making marks in the paint with a brush or their fingers. We introduced the idea of music and started to dance to the music on the paper. We then continued the activity again and introduced the idea of emotions, asking the children how they are feeling (most were feeling excited!). We then discussed what colours make us feel excited (Red and pink) We modelled our excited faces and then put on exciting, fast tempo music. We then introduce the idea of different emotions, the colours that could represent them (although this is subjective to each individual!) and the music to go along with it. We modelled that each emotion could have a different movement based on the music, however some of the children happened to do this naturally; large jumps for exciting music, stamping for angry music, wiggling for happy music and swaying for calm music. We then added different objects based upon different children’s interests to encourage mark making and exploration (including cars, trains and animals). This artwork is now on show as a piece of art in our home corner!
We adapt each activity to each child’s individual ability and interest, for example those that were not interested in painting we encouraged to move their body to the music and dance. To those that are younger we encouraged moving in different ways. Those that are older we discussed what made them happy and how their feelings may have changed during the activity.
We will continue this activity this week and continue to explore the idea of emotion; this exploration of emotion may last a few weeks. We work alongside the children’s interests and their abilities, not moving on to the next step until we feel as though they understand and are ready.
Until next time...
Lots of love
Terrie and the Squirrels
xx
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