Tag Archives: tree study

Our Wonderful Tree: A Collaborative Art Piece

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This week, two projects we have been working on came together at the Art Studio: The Dot Project and our Tree Study. I could easily tell you all about it, but instead we asked the students to write about what they created, how they made it, and how they felt about it. Here is what the children wanted to say (they even came up with the title!):

Our Wonderful Tree: A Beautiful Art Piece
We made art at the Art Studio – something we’ve never made before! We used Plasticine. Plasticine is like Playdough except it is hard. We had to rub the Plasticine with our hands to warm it up. Some of us blew hot air on it or put it on the heater to make it soft. We made a tree trunk and tree branches. Then, we each made a leaf in the shape of a dot. Some of us put our leaves on top of other leaves. We used all the colours of the rainbow (and the colours of fall). Some of us mixed up the colours to make swirls of colour. Our Kindergarten helpers helped us add grass and a butterfly and a flower to our work. Our work makes us happy because it’s so big! We are surprised that we made something that we’ve never made before and it turned out so nice. We are proud that we made such nice art. Some of us are sad that we are finished because we wanted to keep doing more!

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Autumn Playdough Provocations II

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playdough leaf

This playdough provocation was inspired by the tree study we have been doing this term. In our weekly art lesson the children were able to practice drawing a portrait of a tree in the schoolyard and began to notice the parts of the tree as they sketched. I wanted to extend the children’s thinking about trees by getting them to focus on smaller details – like how the leaves attach to the branches.

For this provocation I put three different colours of playdough, some tree branches, leaf cookie cutters, leaves, and toothpicks on the table. I wanted the children to see a real example of how leaves attach to a branch and also have an opportunity to notice the details in the leaves themselves. The toothpicks were there as a tool for the children to add details to the leaves they cut with the cookie cutters.

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I think the results were quite beautiful! Here are a few examples of the students’ work:

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For more Autumn playdough provocations and the recipe I use for my playdough, please visit the link below:

https://thecuriouskindergarten.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/autumn-playdough-provocations/

In the Art Studio: Working with Wire

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For anyone who is interested in adding more inquiry-based learning to their program but isn’t sure where to start, I highly recommend starting with Art. Art involves creativity, problem solving, making choices, discussion, and is generally open-ended. An excellent resource for dipping into art-based inquiry is: The Language of Art by Ann Pelo.

language of art

This week at the Art Studio we were working with wire. The goal was to work the wire into a sculpture of a tree. We have been doing a tree study and I was interested to see how the children might apply what they already know/have learned about trees while they created their sculptures. Wire is not an easy material to work with, save for the fact that it generally stays in the shape that you put it in, so I was also looking for the children to demonstrate some problem solving skills as they completed their pieces.

Here is the provocation I placed at the studio. I happened to have a small wire tree sculpture at home that my husband had received from his former student. The children were quite inspired by it.

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Here are some of the comments the children made during their wire exploration:

“I’m making my branches silly by twisting them up. It’s twirly swirly!”

“So my tree is kind of wiggly at the top because I saw some trees have branches like that.”

“I am twisting my wire all around so it can stay up. I had to twist the wires some more to help my tree stand.”

“My tree is dancing!”

“I did it! I got my tree to stand up!”

“Wire is good because it doesn’t break. I need some more wire down here because this part is a little loose.”

Most children wanted to create a tree that could stand on its own. This proved to be quite the challenge, but I was encouraged to see that the children really persevered at the task and were incredibly proud when they achieved their goal.

A sweet moment I was able to capture was between two boys who were working alongside each other at the table:

F: “This is so hard. I can’t do it.”

J: “You have to do it like this!” (modelling twisting the wire)

F: “No, I can’t even do it.”

J: “Look, I’ll show you. You just have to do this (twisting). See? Try again.”

F: “ugh…” (keeps working on it)

J: “Yeah! That’s it! Keep twisting it until it’s nice and strong!”

F: “Like this? Oh, I can do it now! I made a tree!”

Sometimes we all just need a little encouragement from our friends!

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