The Art of Learning - Exploring Through Multi-faceted Art Forms
These are some of the activities we did
this week with Mother Goose Time. From last week where we explored different visitors to our garden, this week our garden was sprouting up
vegetables: carrots, potatoes, beans, peas and tomatoes.
Finishing up Our Visitors to the Garden from Last Week. Welcoming My favourite - Birds! |
I wanted to focus on this months theme by
exploring the stories and fairy tales that we were reading this week through as
many art forms as possible and seeing what happened when the kids where given
free reign to be creative.
Singing:
We sang to the tune of “Row Your Boat”:
Crack,
crack, crack the pod,
Look
for peas to eat,
Rolling,
rolling, rolling out
Yum,
a tasty treat!
Doing actions as we sang
Drama:
I read the kids the classic fairy tale, The
Princess and the Pea. We used every pillow in the house to create our own
princess bed. The kids took turns acting out the story pretending to be the
princess lying on a stack of pillows. We would slip a block in the pillows, or
not and then they would have to sleep and guess whether or not they were
sleeping on a pea.
The kids love exploring through drama. If
you think about it, they are doing it ALL THE TIME. Whenever they make a fort
from blankets or flags from pillowcases and brooms, they are building sets for
their living play. They are writing acts, creating characters and acting!
Acting Out The Princess and The Pea |
Song and Dance:
I created this activity to tie into the
Stone Soup story so that the kids could explore learning through movement and
song. Beats and rhythm are all about developing the child’s ear. Language
experts suggest that learning to speak and language has far more to do with a
developed ear than anything else. If the child can’t hear the different sounds
in a word or recognize each word or syllable on its own then they struggle to
grasp language and the concept of printing and reading. Singing and rhythm
helps them develop their ears.
I wrote this song and made up this dancing
game. We put an empty soup pot in the middle of the room and a box of Fisher
Price baby shapes beside it. Then each of the kids took spoons and danced in a
circle around the pot as we sang a song I had made up:
We are making a stone soup
We are making a stone soup
We’re gonna put something in a pot
And we’re gonna cook it up until it’s hot
(clap, clap, clap)
Then I asked in in rhythmic tone – Myëlle
what will you put in a stone soup?
Then she would answer – I’ll put a purple
cross in a stone soup.
And then we would move on to the next
child. They learned through song and dance what the story was all about, each
person adding something to the pot in turn. At the same time they were using
movement, song, rhythm, rhyme and practicing their colours and shapes.
Art
We did this art project with the provided
pots, vegetable cut outs, pasta letters, paint. It was fun to watch them
explore choices through this project. I didn’t tell them what to put into the
pot or show them what it should look like. I simply gave them supplies and said
‘Make your own pot of Stone Soup. Put in whatever YOU like.’ We learn better when we our creativity is
given free range and we can explore choices and make decisions.
'T's Art |
'M's Art |
Just Some
Hardcore PLAY
I gave them pots, spoons, ladles and sent
them outside and told them to make ‘Stone Soup’ 3 hours later… they were still
engrossed. They had prepped like sous chefs in a kitchen bowls of grass
dandilions, dirt, rocks etc. They took turns collecting, sorting prepping and
cooking.
The Take Home
Lesson
When I started doing Kindergarten at home
with my son several years ago I was all business when it came to school.
Worksheets, read-alouds, nature walks. I thought I was so ‘outside of the box’
so ‘Charlotte Mason.’ Our support teacher would ask me – What are you doing for
Drama, music, PE etc. I was all ‘huh, this is kindergarten. Aren’t those things
high school electives?’ The more time that has gone by and the more things that
we have tried at home with the kids, the more it has been cemented in my mind
that ESPECIALLY in the early years the arts is HOW they learn. It is the natural universal language of every child
and the more we can tap into using it as a teaching tool, the further they will
go.
Don’t let all the teachers have all the
fun. Bring learning home and participate in watching your child grow. It’s more
FUN than you think!
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