We often use loose material compositions in our classroom as a way for children to tell us what they know.
We set out various materials, stones, gems, paper and sticks.
These representations are not permanent.
We take a picture and then the material gets sorted back and the activity is ready for the next child.
This summer has been an incredible journey into the world of art.
It started with a family trip to the Harn museum that inspired explorations into color,lines and shapes, which led to the discovery of different mediums and techniques.We read books about famous artists like, Vincent Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe and Jackson Pollack.
Somewhere around mid summer we provoked the idea of finding a way to show our art to our families .We talked about our trip to the museum and the children were excited to make an "art show" for their parents and friends.
Our art show was a huge success.
We documented the work that the children did with the intention of making our summer visible to our parents. This type of documentation lets those not in our classroom day to day understand our path; where we started and why and how we ended up where we did.
Our art show was not only an opportunity to show off our beautiful works of creativity, it was also a way to show the children that we val…
We read this great book called " Swirl by Swirl" spirals in nature by Joyce Sidman. With all of our talk of dots, lines and shapes we thought the spiral was a cool new idea to explore. We were really amazed at how many spirals occur naturally in "nature" . We set up an invitation for the children to explore and create spirals. Clay was our first medium . Through the use of clay the children discovered that a spiral is a line. The children had to first make a line with their clay. A friend told us, " you just gotta roll it up! Quinn told us " spirals turn into lines when they get uncurled!" We put all of our spirals together to make one beautiful piece of art. Our friends also realized that they could create spirals in other ways. With pencils and crayons, and chenille sticks on the light table...