ART

In today’s art session we took a non traditional approach to painting. This was very interesting and encouraged us to move away from making our work perfect and precise, to making it our own.

By creating paintbrushes out of many different materials, what is created can give great effects when painting with on paper. It takes you beyond an average paintbrush and allows for so much more creativity. Before we began using these brushes, I was a bit apprehensive in that I didn’t want my painting to turn out looking bad, which I expected it would given the brush I was using. However while using it I felt like what I was creating was so much better, and the finished product I was very surprised with.

This has opened my eyes to trying this with children. Not only would it make the lesson more interesting and a bit different, it takes some pressure off of children to make their art look like what it should and make it look how they want.

Also by limiting their paint to primary colours and white encourages them to make their own colours and create colours and shades of colours.

We were read a description of a painting by somebody looking at a picture, however we could not see this picture. This was a great way to let us be creative and paint what we could see in our heads instead of copying a picture and everybody’s looking the same.

‘I have the freedom to discover and choose ways to create images and objects using a variety of materials.

EXA 0-02a’

(Education Scotland, 2009)

I feel this activity would be appropriate for this outcome given that the children made their own brushes from whatever materials they could find.

DANCE

In this dance session we really progressed with our dances. All of the groups performed their own, which we brought together, added a beginning dance and end dance with the whole class and each group done their own bit in the middle. This was extremely effective and gave us a finished piece.

This kind of progression of activities would be ideal for doing with children as although in the end it becomes a class piece where everyone is involved, each one of the groups own ideas and moves come through when they get to do their group dance (Cone, 2009). I think it’s so important for children’s creativity to be recognised and it not be completely choreographed by the class teacher as it takes the element of fun and of the children feeling proud away from it. It also gives the teacher less work!

References

Cone, T. P. (2009) Following Their Lead Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances. Journal of Dance Education. Vol.9 (3), pp.81–89.