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!

See You Next Time

Disclosure: I receive Mother Goose Time Curriculum free of charge for educational purposes in return for posting my honest experiences using the curriculum. Photos of children featured on my blog for review of Mother Goose Time are used with signed consent of the child's parents. I welcome any questions or concerns.