Observation Drawing

Drawing is an exciting new skill for children and guiding them on this journey of development can be especially rewarding. Children become so excited when they realize they can make a mark look like a vase or a flower! This observational drawing activity was designed to support the children's ability to use drawing to communicate their view of the environment.



By creating an inviting space the children immediately wanted to participate in the experience, they all took up a drawing board and pencil and listened to Kel our educators' sequence of steps and tips for drawing the vase.




Here we can see Kel using her drawing to inspire/guide the children. The children each began by drawing the vase, we supported children who asked for aid and praised every effort. Each child carefully added the water beads and lots of long strokes to represent the leaves and stems.



Some children wanted to add special features to their drawing further communicating to us 'the viewer' how they perceived the vase of flowers. Hudson wanted to add the nettles on the end of the blossoms and used circles to represent these. Asher wanted to use different colours to indicate the variety of flora in the vase. Amelia wanted to draw one of her flowers drooping to show that she saw how not all the flowers stoood up straight. We can learn a lot about how children see the world by looking at what they choose to include or exclude from their drawings.




The children were so interested in drawing the vase that we set up another observational drawing experience this time with a tree branch. We chose to use charcoal as our medium today to add a 'dark and gloomy' effect to the drawing of the 'dead branch'. The children were not afraid to work with this medium and began straight away by drawing the square box the branch stood in. Next the single line for the stem and many little lines to replicate the spiky twigs.



The children naturally explored the medium and used it to create different effects on their page, here we can see Jullian turning the charcoal on it's side to shade his pot.



Asher and Obi worked next to one another and in doing so supported one another. They watched each other when adding the strokes to the branches and imitated technique. Asher inspired Obi to write his name using the charcoal. Working in small groups allows children to scaffold each others learning, children watch their peers and say: "I can do that"



Noah was so happy with his representation that he decided to do another drawing and in fact completed three drawings of the tree, he was very interested in using the charcoal as a medium and was displayed a sense of pride as he handed in his three drawings. It is up to us as educators to then further cement this achievement by displaying his art in a respectful and thoughtful way.



Asher also enjoyed the experience so much that he chose to extend his own learning and later that day he collected his own resources and set up with his drawing buddy Obi ready to draw the vase again. He wanted to explore the use of colour again and included a variety of blossoms each a different colour. Asher is confident in his ability to use drawing to learn and communicate.

Philosophy Building

Below you will see the beginnings of a philosophy tree displayed at our preschool. On each branch we have a different value/early childhood approach to teaching and supporting children's growth and development. The teaching and learning branch involves ideas like; using intentional teaching, scaffolding and multi cultural pedagogues to support every child's way of learning. The children's perspectives branch explores  ideals like 'looking through the eye's of the chilld' and seeing the child as 'capable and competent'. The sustainability branch is very important to our preschool and signifies the value we place on engaging the children in hands on environmental projects. The community/Indigenous branch reflects how we celebrate the child's life beyond preschool and the different ways of being/learning the Indigenous culture can teach us. Lastly the multi modal communication branch emphasizes how we strive to use the creative arts to create a rich and expressive curriculum. This is just a brief over view of what each branch means to us and clearly shows how our philosophy guides our practice. The few leaves you can see have one word written on them - either by a parent or a child about what they think the branch means for them.... 

Asher explained that learning to him means 'practicing'.... a very mature method I thought.... he then proceeded to practice writing the word practice! Asher clearly understands himself and how he learns best...

We had an overwhelming response from the children to the question: "how do you like learning new things?" Mostly we found the answer to involve 'playing', 'riding bikes'' 'climbing' and the 'sandpit'... We soon realized that these while very valid ways to learn were the children's interests and decided to add them to the roots of the tree... we feel these are the things that guide the curriculum, the environment and the relationships within the preschool. 

One very interesting idea that is now part of the roots of our preschool is that of a 4 year old named Jasper. Jasper likes coming to preschool to.... THINK.. Yes that's right, he likes solving problems, challenging himself, daydreaming, questioning and hypothesizing! If you knew Jasper you would know this to be true and would then clearly make this a priority for him, we want to support Jasper's thinking. Because we value children's perspectives we will include this in our daily practices and plans. We are learning a lot about how to bring our philosophy to life and about how each value/idea can support children's learning. 

Parents are adding to our tree and are taking time to reflect on what it is that will make their child's early childhood experience great. Gem's mum values music as a way of communication, if we include many musical moments within our curriculum we know that Gem will enjoy and learn through this practice. Obviously the music has to be relevant to Gem and to what we are teaching... we won't be singing a song about cars when we are learning about turtles... 

The main point to all this philosophizing about 'music', 'practicing' and 'thinking' is that we are now actively involving the children, educators and parents in the design and implementation of a responsive early childhood program. The impact of the children's and families ideas on our day at preschool is evident immediately and creates valuable learning opportunities for all involved... We are excited by our tree's potential and look forward to sharing more from our tree in the coming weeks as our ideas grow new leaves...

A Triple Decker Garage

The builders have been hammering away out the back of our preschool building a deck and the children have been very interested in the goings on, Jasper especially has taken an interest in the builders. He sits and watches them intently for extended periods of time. So rather than sitting and watching I asked if he would like to do some real building of his own - with real bricks! He liked this idea and we headed to the sandpit.

  

We started with a single room that consisted of three walls and a roof. Jasper decided it was a garage. I asked if we could make another garage on top of the first story and he said: "Lets make a triple decker one" Soon we had lots of apprentice concreters mixing up the best batch of concrete they could. It had to be just the right consistency to hold the walls up on the second story. Summer, Matilda, Tamryn and Peyton were the pioneer concrete mixers who decided that sloppy was the best!



Our next challenge was smoothing out the concrete on the bricks, the shovels are not quite flat enough for this process and we ended up with big mounds of cement. I was sent on a mission to find the trowels and quickly gave them to our concreters.



Tamryn was very proud of her sloppy concrete mix and worked tirelessly at mixing the cement round and round, she defended the consistency to Jasper who said its no good if it isn't sloppy: Tamryn replied very confidently "It is sloppy, VERY sloppy"





Soon the building site was alive with busy workers, Amy, Lilly and Samantha Lee joined in adding lots of concrete ready for the third story.



Jasper noticed how busy everyone was with the concreting so decided he would be the brick guy, Asher came over and asked: "Are you guys making concrete?" Jasper was getting the bricks and said: "I'm the brick guy" Asher followed Jasper and said "I want to be the brick guy" The brick guys finished off the third story and said: "There a triple decker garage"



Here we can see the finished product and the beginnings of a new level! The children wanted to keep going and they left their structure in the sandpit to add to later. Using real materials with children gives them a sense of importance and purpose. The use of real bricks was the main motivation fro Jasper and directly supported his interest in the builders. The children extended this experience themselves and created goals within their play - to get the concrete to the right consistency!