Section 4 - Cengage



Section 4

Think About It—Activities to Try for Fun

In addition to the activities included in your text, try some of the following art activities with your group of students.

Make a Banner or Flag

The banner is used universally for creating an atmosphere for parades, celebrations, or special days. With the very smallest children, a project devoted to making marching flags is fun and rewarding. Using thin strips of wood acquired from the scrap boxes of the local lumberyards and rectangles of brown wrapping paper, each child can design his/her own flag using paints or crayons, colored papers, or the materials that are normally found in scrap boxes in the art center. On certain seasonal or holiday occasions (such as Flag Day and July 4th) the entire room can be decked in flags and banners representing the occasion. Each child can express in his/her own way the meaning of that particular holiday or season in a long, flowing banner made of brown wrapping paper, shelving paper, or ordinary white paper. The child can attach one end of the banner to a strip of wood with staples or glue and can hang the banner from the classroom ceiling or from a wire stretched from wall to wall. Students can also make banners and flags on fabrics and add the decorative elements by gluing other fabrics onto the large piece of fabric.

Color Discrimination Activity—The Greens

This is a good activity to sharpen a child’s color discrimination. Begin with a discussion of spring and the color green. Show and discuss the color green associated with the season. Then pin a piece of green paper on a flannel (or bulletin) board. Have each child find green cloth and paper to cut (or tear) pieces from and pin to the board. Overlapping pieces creates an attractive green collage. Magazines and old wrapping paper provide good sources for “greens.”

Decorating Classroom Windows

Using the classroom windows for artwork is a good idea, but don’t display stereotype images, mass-produced cartoon images, or copy other windows. Instead, allow the children to invent original uses for this space. There are excellent paints now available for use on glass that easily wash away. These are good for making large paintings on the windows. Windows may also be covered with thin white tissue paper, tracing paper, or acetate. Children can then make beautiful designs or pictures by applying transparent cellophane or paint to these areas. Occasionally, if the windows consist of small panes, each student may be assigned a single pane to design. The child may use black construction paper with areas cut out and bits of transparent paper and cellophane inserted in the open areas as one method.

Are these appropriate activities for the children you are currently working with? Why or why not? Do you plan to use these activities with children? Why or why not? How could you adapt these activities for an older or younger group of children?

Think About It—Interest Centers for Toddlers

Some of the following interest areas may be considered when planning art and art-related centers for toddlers.

Construction center. Learning to put things together with clocks provides toddlers with a fun activity and introduces them to making original designs. A shelf or cabinet with a small set of blocks identifies the construction area. Units, double units, ramps, and a few semicircular blocks are just right for toddlers to use with cars and people on the floor. Smaller, colorful cubes, connecting blocks, and small foam blocks are appropriate on tables. Large Lego® blocks, Bristle® blocks, and other varieties of construction toys helps toddlers create different types of structures. Sorting sizes and putting together pieces teach the toddler to discriminate and to develop control over small muscles in the fingers and hands. Imaginative caregivers may need to work along with toddlers to build enthusiasm for using their own ideas in creating simple constructions. The child’s sense of design is developed in this type of activity.

Curiosity corner. Toddlers begin to appreciate the unusual objects to be found in the curiosity corner (with less mouthing and throwing). Plants, leaves, shells, magnets, pumpkins, nests, gourds, pinecones, tree bark, magnifiers, and many other natural objects and examining implements delight the curious toddler, who observes carefully, touching and feeling these objects. The assortment can be changed with each season. All of these experiences contribute to the very young children’s understanding and knowledge of the world and help them develop a child’s appreciation of color, texture, size, and shape.

Sensory corner. An area with playthings rich in a variety of textures, shapes, sizes, sounds, weights, and colors can be an exciting spot for toddlers. Floors, walls, and the sides of cabinets can be used to mount textures. Bells, sound canisters and multi-sized balls, animals, cups, bowls, and similar sensory toy objects can be placed in containers together. All the sensory experiences contribute to the development of perceptual skills basic to all art activities. Shapes and visually detailed toys, for example, will improve the toddler’s visual perception. It is a challenge for toddlers to enjoy new playthings using the senses, such as soft rings and snakes made up of differently textured squares, quilts, and wall hangings or painted or covered sets of blocks with varying textures, colors, and sizes.

Sand table. A low table containing sand, vehicles, animals, shovels, and assorted funnels, cups, and spoons is a standard fixture in the early childhood program. Toddlers gain a good deal from the endless sorting, measuring, classifying, and sensory experiences they have with sand. Scooping, patting, smoothing, pushing, piling, and packing are examples of activities with sand, all of which contribute to the child’s developing coordination and perception. Vocabulary is also developed when adults explain actions and changes everyone notices. The props should be changed occasionally, except when particular toddlers have strong preferences for some playthings.

Special space. An area of the toddler room can be devoted to unique projects and specially planned activities. Such activities might include specific experiences such as cooking. Special projects conducted a few times a week on a regular basis may be encouraged in this area, especially when the toddlers seem to need an interesting experience of when teachers wish to try something new and different.

Think About It—Creative Quiet

Because we have access to so many wonderful creative activities and equipment, as well as vividly illustrated books, colorful toys, and so much inviting play equipment, we may be forgetting to allow time and space for quiet reflection that children are capable of and need.

Here are some suggestions to create quiet for children in your room.

• Reserve an area of your room, center, or school for those who want to sit quietly. Make sure it is a cozy, comfortable place, and don’t allow noisy distractions or disputes of any kind to enter the quiet place. Keep decoration to a minimum.

• Don’t decorate every window with paintings. Children love to look out the window and watch rain or snow falling; trucks, cars, and people passing; grass blowing in the wind; or any of the hundreds of other fascinating things that are happening in the world outside the window.

• Change room displays often. Instead of hanging every piece of artwork and every poster, allow space for appreciation of each individual piece. Each of us is more likely to notice and respond to new displays. Children are no exception. Covering the walls with an overabundance of visual messages can cause sensory overload and defeat the purpose. An occasional blank wall or space is restful to the eyes and to the spirit.

• Find a quiet space for yourself, even if it’s not possible in your workday with children. Find a point in the morning before school begins or in the late afternoon.

After school is over, when you can be alone, sit back and be quiet. This can be a restful, as well as rejuvenating, time for you. Teachers as well as children need time and space for quiet reflection.

Think About It—Learning about Art Concepts

Artists’ work involves many different principles of art. The following are some basic art concepts that you can use when looking at artwork. They can also be used in your work with children as they create their own art.

Line

Meaning in Art—Every object has an edge. On paper a line indicates the edges of a shape or an object. Lines may be used to divide areas to create separate spaces. Lines lead the eye from one shape or area to another. Similar lines used in an area become texture. Lines that change, intersect, or repeat become shapes, forms, mass, or patterns. A line can change direction.

Attributes

Lines are expressive. They can be named according to their qualities:

• Vertical/Horizontal/Diagonal

• Straight/Curved/Zigzag/Crooked

• Thick/Thin

• Smooth/Rough/Bumpy/Sharp/Wavy

• Slow/Fast

• Hard/Soft

• Long/Short

• Wide/Narrow

• Regular/irregular

• Gentle/Harsh

• Blurred/Clean

• Up/Down

• Even/Broken

Horizontal lines feel peaceful. Vertical lines indicate growth. Diagonal lines indicate excitement and movement.

Pattern

Pattern is repetition. We repeat many things that we see, hear, feel, and taste. In nature we see pattern in the branches of a tree or in a row of trees. Musical notes often repeat themselves to form a pattern or melody. In poetry sounds are repeated, and the number of sounds form a pattern. We repeat the way we live, Mondays, Fridays, Decembers. We often create pattern by arranging objects in orderly and interesting ways.

Pattern is rhythm. Listening to breathing, to a heart beat, to the rain; look at the bricks on a wall, a fence, or shingles on a roof, or ripples on water. Pattern is used to add detail to a surface.

In art, pattern is the repetition of lines, shapes, and colors. The repetition in a pattern provides order, rhythm, and unity. Pattern may be highly organized or unorganized (random).

Texture

Discover texture by touching and looking. The way texture looks may not be the way it feels. Texture can be created by using dots, lines, and shapes to create the surface of an object. Texture may also be created by the way a tool is used—the use of a crayon on its side, scratching into the crayon surface, smooth and bumpy paint, dry brush, and wet on wet paint. Create contrast or emphasis by placing textured areas next to smooth ones.

In art, texture refers to the surface quality of an object. Texture may be tactile or visual. Tactile or actual texture can be touched. Visual texture is the reproduction of texture which cannot be felt, but suggests texture to the eye.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download