The children have been extremely interested in art in nature and their process inside the classroom at the art easel showed that they were comfortable with sketching before painting. The teachers decided to prompt a way for them to connect with this in an individual way in addition to providing the opportunity to share and explain their representations.
The class gathered in the crater on the Main Yard. We shared with them that everyone is going to explore the yard, forest area, and grass and find something they want to sketch in pencil. We gave them 5 minutes to explore the spaces and find what they wanted to represent. It was great watching each of the children find something they connected with. We had the children turn to the person next to them and share what it is they decided to represent.
We then shared with the children the next part of the plan. We gave the children 10 minutes to make their representation. Each child was asked to look closely at their object and draw in detail what they see. Some some children decided to trace their object, some got really close to it to draw, some chose to draw it from a distance then add detail to it afterwards, and Logan decided to turn his into a story.
We gathered again in the crater. We went around and each child shared their work:
Zaydan- This is the bottom. This is the loops. And squiggles. I don't know what it is.
Leithian- I think it's a coyote bone.
Logan- Mine is a story of a stick and it's going to vacuum a bug because a bug was on my paper when I was drawing!
Nicky- Mine is my stick and it has bumps. These are the lines at the end. It's too hard to draw the cracks inside.
Chloe- I made a drawing of yellow flowers with a blue middle.
Kate- I made yellow flowers with grass with a blue middle.
Rose- They don't look the same.
Trevor- Yes, you are noticing they chose to represent the same thing but their drawings look different. Every artist creates things in their own way.
Rose- My picture is of a tree and 2 different kinds of flowers on a sunny day like today!
Frankie- Yellow flowers and this little thing is the sun.
Oli- The flowers that I drew.
Paul Eric- I made a leaf.
Jenna- Yes you did. How did you draw them?
Mila- You traced them!
Tommy- I made a waterfall. This (he begins to use his pointer finger to outline his drawing.) Out it goes to the pond!
Livia- 2 flowers with a bee.
Leithian- This is a hummingbird with a pink and black head. These are bushes below it and it's perched on the bush.
Grace- I draw this. It's a bush leaf.
Mila- This is a flower with its buds. This is lavendar. This is me looking at it.
We were thrilled with how engaged and excited the children were with this process. This was another way to connect and explore with the children about art in nature and for them to view themselves as artists.
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I notice – I wonder