ART

For this weeks art class we looked at the idea that as a teacher you can give the same stimulus to children but still get a lot of variety in their response.

For todays art work we were only given the three primary colours (and white) and a homemade ‘paintbrush’. The brushes were made from sticks and various bits and pieces. These paint brushes can also serve to break the anxiety children can have about trying to make their work perfect.  As stated by McAuliffe et al (2007), as children get older, they start to become self conscious about their work. Therefore, we must encourage creativity and concepts over execution and accuracy, so that pupils are less focussed on the quality of their work, and more on the ideas behind it. There is no way that their work can turn out perfect using a tool like this. Creating these paint brushes would also be a fun activity to do prior to this one.

We were also allowed to choose our own colour of paper we wanted to the picture on furthering this sense of self expression and individuality.

Our lecturer then described a painting he was looking at but we couldn’t see meaning that we could not copy the image but rather had to listen and use our imagination to paint the scene he was describing. In order to create this image we had to explore colour mixing and using our brush to create different textures we wanted in our picture.

The end result was that although we were all painting from the same description all our work turned out very different as we mixed different colours, painted on different coloured paper and used different brushes.

My Picture:

A friend’s picture:

As you can see, although we used the same stimulus there is absolutely no similarity in our pictures. We choose different brushes, paper and a different approach to the picture. My friend used a lot of lighter colours where as I kept my painting very dark.

I like this idea for use in the classroom as it involves using the imagination and also tests memory for the children to remember how you described the picture. The only concern I would have is that children who feel unsure allowing their imagination to lead might copy the child next to them thus destroying the aspect of creativity and individualism.

DANCE

This weeks dance class was a continuation of last weeks. We took our ten dance moves from last week and built upon them. As this month is October we decided to give our dance a halloween theme. I like the idea of using a theme because its relevant to real life. We were once again in our groups and given a picture relating to halloween. There were given things like skeletons, bats, cobwebs and cauldrons. We had to create a dance move relating to the picture we were given. I like this idea for use in schools as it gives the children freedom to create and feel proud of something rather than do a move given to them by the teacher.

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