DANCE
“Children’s dance is a way of knowing that fully integrates all aspects of being human. Kinesthetically, intellectually, socially and emotionally, children learn about themselves and others through the medium of dance”(Cone and Cone, 2012)
For our first dance lesson we learned about different warmups we can use for the children before starting the dance lesson. These were all fun and engaging so that the children would want to do them. One was highland tig- two people were the ‘tiggers’ and if they caught someone else in the class they had to do a highlight jig until someone else freed them by crawling through their legs. Another warm up was that the whole class lined up and the person at the front of the line created a dance move and the rest followed, this was good as it meant everyone had the chance to be creative and to participate.
Following on from this we were given a large sheet of paper and had to draw around one of the members of our group and then label all the body parts we knew. An i-pad was passed around so that we could check our answers and also fill in any that we had missed. I think this would be a great activity for the class as it mixes art with biology. Also, the childrens posters would make great wall displays.
ART
Today’s art workshop was very much about breaking down the idea of ‘I can’t draw/I can’t do art’. We were all given an A3 sheet of paper a wooden board covered in ink and we had to use different parts of our hands such as fingertips or side of the hand to create marks on the paper with the ink.
At first we were to just explore the different marks we could make on the paper with our own hands. I think that this exploratory nature is great as it exposes children to all kinds of art which Brown(2016) is believes is necessary to engage children with all different backgrounds with art.
Following on from this we were to look at our marks and see if we could use a pen to turn our marks into an actual picture. As you can see on the right hand side of the picture I thought that the print of the side of my hand looked like a mouse so I used a pen to add a nose and whiskers.
I also thought that some smudges made by my hand took on the form of the front of a gorilla with its head and arms.
We also used inorganic materials such as a lego brick to make further prints.
I really enjoyed this workshop as it was great to see what imagination and a few simple marks could create. I believe it fits in well with curriculum because it means that all the childrens work will turn out different avoiding the problem of simply copying a picture the teacher has gave them. Thus making art exciting and relevant.
“In order to make art more relevant, exciting and meaningful to students in school we need to draw upon the incredible resources at our disposal and the intellectual dynamism, creativity and imagination of our time” (Edited, 2004)
REFERENCES
Brown, M. (2016) Government pilot schemes to offer children free access to arts. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/aug/09/government-pilot-schemes-to-offer-children-free-access-to-arts.
Cone, T.P. and Cone, S.L. (2012) Teaching children dance. 3rd edn. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics
Edited, R.H. (2004) Art Education 11-18: Meaning, purpose and direction. Edited by Richard Hickman. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
