I was pleasantly surprised with the stalls that were set up along the road by different art schools in JB. There were also plenty for little ones to create. However when I returned home and looked at my son's angry bird magnet creation, I cant help but question where is the creativity in it? It looks great, however most of the work was pre-prepared by the teacher, all the child had to do was to follow a sample and assemble the things together. Even so, the teacher did most of the work for them. So where is the thought process? What did the child learn from making it? What was the idea behind it? What skills and technique did the child learn?
This brings me to the blog that I have written about my experience with KidsArtFun @ Clover 2 years ago. There was some error to the blog and it wasn't published. So here is the long awaited blog :
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When I was asked to teach art, I asked myself the question. What is Art actually? What should preschoolers be learning about art and what can they really achieve? What can they create?
I began the classes this year by asking the children, “What is art?” “What do you do in art class?” they said art is painting, drawing, art is craft, something hung on the wall…etc. one of the children said : “Art is when teacher draws something, we just copy.” It struck me that art should not be ‘just copy’, it should encourage children to develop creativity. Yes, initially children learn through imitation but once they have learnt the skills, they should be able to create art independently with confidence.
So this is my quest for KidsArtFun Year of 2011, to bring them from 'just copy' to 'creating with confidence'!
So where should I start teaching art from? I thought learning from the famous artist would be a great way to start this journey to creativity. To learn to look and appreciate art, think about art, form opinions about art and also to learn the skills to create art like a famous artist.
Firstly, they needed to know how to manipulate the tools to use them to create art. So you can see we did a lot of exploration of tools to create art and how to use them creatively.
Exploration of tools: Early on in the year, we first explored how to use tools creatively, to expand the children's mind to think about the different ways to use them. We used a variety of tools and explored them through different ways of holding, rolling, flicking, poking,brushing, printing etc. List of tools explored include:
Learning about Colours :We then move on to colours, observing colours in our environment, learning about primary colours, secondary colours, mixing colours, rainbow. primary, secondary colours, tertiary colours, rainbow colours, mixing colours, colour wheel, warm/cool colours..etc.
As an extension for craft using rainbow colours, we experienced how to make sand art from raw sand by sieving, adding and mixing food colouring to get desired colours, putting out to sun and dry, then pour them into a glass bottle through funnel to make beautiful patterns.
pencil, charcoal, colour pencils, crayon, paint with brush, finger painting, printing with vegetables/leaves/sponges, paint with other materials such as card board, cotton bud, tip of a brush.
Learning about Colours :We then move on to colours, observing colours in our environment, learning about primary colours, secondary colours, mixing colours, rainbow. primary, secondary colours, tertiary colours, rainbow colours, mixing colours, colour wheel, warm/cool colours..etc.
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Learning about rainbow colours through pictures and song!
Do you see concentration, joy and even dance during art class?
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| We sieved, we added food colouring and gave it a good massage! |
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| Drying coloured sand in the sun. |
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| Our K1 & K2 budding artist. (2011) |
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| Our very own coloured sand - pouring through funnels into glass bottles. |
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| Our N2 and K1 making sand art in a bottle. |
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| Our end product with our project with coloured sand art. |
Art piece titled: Birds of paradise
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| Beautiful rainbow coloured birds in the rainforest. Hand printing and printing with real leaves. |
From Primary colours, we learnt how to mix them to get secondary colours. We learnt to identify cool colours and warm colours. Now it's time to put them together to make the colour wheel!
| Art piece titled: Colour Wheel |
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| The primary colours: Red, Blue & Yellow. |
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| The secondary colours: Purple, Green & Orange |
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| Finally its the tertiary colours. |
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| They first matched the colours with crayon for the inner wheel. As for the outer wheel, they had to mix only the primary colours to get the desired secondary and tertiary colours. 3 colours is all we need to make the rest of the colours! |
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| The completed colour wheel, originally designed around the1800’s to show how different colors blended. |
We also went on to explore different ways to create art-> will update more in detail and pictures
- Drawing, shading, painting, colouring, folding of origami, colour sand, sand art, printing, straw blowing, scraping, collage, painting on egg, making coloured sand, still life. etc
We learnt stories about Famous Artist/their famous works of art & technique used, we then explored and adopted the skill in our painting-> will update more in detail & pictures
- Leonardo Da Vinci / Mona Lisa / exploration & colouring
- Paul Cezanne / Apples / Still Life
- Vincient Van Gogh / sunflowers - Deutsch: Stilleben mit 12 Sonnenblumen English: Vase with 12 sunflowers
- Vincient Van Gogh / Starry night / Strong colours, mixing no or little water
- Georges Suerat / River … / pointillism
- Monet / The Water Lily Pond/ mixing paint on paper
- Henri Matisse/ The Snail / Collage: Drawing with scissors
- Andy Warhol /Pop Art
END OF PART 1 Stay tuned for part 2-3-4 where we made easter eggs in nest, learn about many famous artist...etc...
Blog Author: Auntie Shirin
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