We began with music this week, and looking at rhythm and beat. Using only drumsticks or beaters, we learned how to tap out the beat to a number of different songs and genres. Similar to the figure notes system we looked earlier in the module, we used a very basic coded system designed to introduce children slowly to the timings of notes. Using words with the same number of syllables as beats in a note, for example ‘square’ for a crotchet and ‘circle’ for a quaver, even the most musically challenged of us (me!) could pick it up easily. This was then extended to the more common ‘ta’ and ‘te-te’ system of counting out the rhythm. We progressed on to the symbols for each note, and then on to reading traditional music notation, including rests and bars. We practiced playing different songs of varying difficulty within these systems, progressing rapidly through a programme that would usually stretch over a number of terms in primary school, to give us an overview of how much the children would learn and develop over the course of this programme. The final activity shown was an interactive task that enabled children to compose their own beat using the various different notes to produce four-beat bars.
Within the visual arts workshop, we discussed as a cohort, the experiences we had each had on placement within the arts. It was clear that there was a lot of similarities and routinisation in our experiences, with not a lot of originality observed. This led on to consideration of alternative themes to use for art; swapping ‘Christmas’ art for ‘Winter’ art, looking at myths such as the firefox legend surrounding the Northern Lights, and thinking about how these could be used to inspire creativity and originality in ideas. Another idea discussed was the notion of removing one of the senses to cause children to think creatively and extend their imaginations – for example playing a movie clip without showing the visuals and encouraging the children to draw their interpretation of the scene. This activity does not require a lot of resources – a simple pencil drawing would suffice – but gives children a chance to develop the basic skill of drawing. Tim Ingold (2013) tells us that we are educating children out of drawing by placing so much more value on writing, which makes this a highly effective activity to impress upon learners the value of drawing and creative interpretation.
The last point discussed was from an international standpoint. We looked at how the environment can be used in the creation of art, through the use of snow in Finnish schools as a material for art. Whilst we don’t get enough snowfall in Scotland to be able to produce anything close to the scale of snow art in Finland, it is worthwhile considering the opportunities the environment can offer for art – using seasonal materials such as fallen leaves in autumn and colourful flowers in spring and summer allows children to create without the restriction of traditional materials.
The common thread running between both of today’s inputs for me has been the idea of stripping things back to basics, and using minimal resources to get the creative juices flowing. When children are shown that they can compose music with something as simple as two drumsticks, or create sculptures from nature’s materials, they are shown the value of their imagination.
REFERENCES
Ingold, T. (2013) Thinking Dangerously in Teacher Education Conference Keynote Speech 34.03 mins. [Online] Available: https://vimeo.com/77119799 [Accessed: 5 October 2017]
