Integrated Arts – Week 7

This week during integrated Arts we had some Norwegian students over visiting our campus and we were lucky to have them join our class for the day and show us various ways in which art is encouraged in Norway. We were told how important outdoor learning is in Norway and how valued it is. Norwegian schools use outdoor learning for every class in one way or another. I found this really interesting as I would love to use outdoor learning when I am out teaching in schools as it encourages new ways of learning in different environments. For this input in particular the use of outdoor learning was a great success as there were so many different types of art we could create using nature as our pallet. As put by Birch, (2017) –
“Nature is everywhere which means so too can art. Whether you are out in the backyard with the kids, the park, the beach, even just the sidewalk waiting for a bus there is nature around us. And with nature, both children and adults alike can express their creativity.”
Nature is everywhere which means so too can art. Whether you are out in the backyard with the kids, the park, the beach, even just the sidewalk waiting for a bus there is nature around us. And with nature, both children and adults alike can express their creativity. First of all we went outside to look at what was on offer around us to use within pieces of art nature. For example we used rocks, leaves and sticks to create many different pieces of art. My group created a frame using sticks and strips of long grass to bing the sticks together. This was the outcome of the frame we created.

We then went a walk around the campus to have a look at what the other groups created and all were very different due to the different parts of the campus people stopped at meaning different things on offer. This was really increasing to see and would be good for children to see different ideas and what different materials could be used for. I really enjoyed this input as it would show children how many different things could be created from using natural resources around us and therefore encouraging art in different environments.
After the art input we went into the Mac labs to create an autumn theme tune to match our walk around the campus. We used garage band to create these theme tunes. We thought about what noises and what atmosphere we found whilst being outside and in turn put it into the music we began to compose. I felt this was a really useful lesson as it incorporated the art within the music. It also would assist in teaching children about rhythm and beat and also the value of notes. We were able to create a song that suited us to our own experience outside. We were able to choose the instruments we wanted to use and therefore this would also help children in understanding the values of different instruments. In using garage band, we were able to work out different ways of getting the final outcome of what we wanted our theme tune to sound like. It also went from using nature outside to create art, to using technology to create music. I think this is also a really valuable lesson to show children due to the fact that both can be used in completely different ways but have extremely successful and important outcomes.

References

Birch, Rebecca (2017) Art in nature, it’s everywhere. Nature Play, QLD. [online] Available: https://www.natureplayqld.org.au/art-in-nature

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