by Susan Ramsay and Guest Contributors
Many children spontaneously gift adults in their lives with artistic expressions of ideas, emotions, or newly acquired skills. This Café Chat offers an opportunity to reflect on an experience of receiving the gift of expression from a child.
This Café Chat invites you to reflect on Henry’s process of expressing himself through art and the creation of his “bored book.” This article includes a flipbook version of Henry’s original creation along with reflection questions for discussion with your staff team, colleagues or fellow students.
The children were in various processes of putting on their indoor shoes, washing hands, opening lunch boxes and refilling water bottles. It was during this busyness that I heard one child and then another direct me to “Put on a show!” “We always watch a show when we eat.”
Read my reflection about how our thoughtful choices about the use of digital tools and media in our programs can impact children’s expressions and learning.
Peyton is a prolific 5-year-old artist. She rarely uses colouring sheets generated and mass produced by the adult world. Instead, she almost always begins with a blank canvas.
It was January and snow covered the playground. There had been several ‘snow days’ when busses had been cancelled. It was in this context that we offered shaving foam as an invitation to the children.
The school doors flew open as children erupted onto the playground. Several children chased one another across the open field…. then stopped dead in their tracks.
From ‘scribbles’ to graffiti to artwork hung in art galleries, drawing and mark making is a distinctively human language. So, when I saw first two, then three, then four, then many children drawing together on the playground pavement, I felt pulled toward their conversation.
The bucket of coloured chalk had always been a reliable and inspirational source of story-making, portraiture, map-making, and so much more on the black pavement canvas.