art

Once upon an iPad…

@MarcWithersey art, Drawing, Outdoors, photography, writing , , ,

Storytelling with photography and drawing tools is one of my favourite imaginative play activities in my Reception class.

In our ‘Who lives in Castles?’ enquiry children used the outdoor area to build huge castle structures with large blocks on our climbing equipment. The small world characters they wanted to use to retell the story of Rapunzel didn’t cut it, they were too small for their castles. The castles were too fragile for real life role play and the bricks would fall to the floor.

After taking a photograph of their castle structure with the iPad camera, I taught the children how to tap ‘Edit’ and use the ‘…’ button to access the Markup tools. 3 simple steps to navigate from a photograph to a mark making activity.

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Connecting with Emotions

@MarcWithersey art, Drawing, e-Safety, early years , , , , ,

Asking questions about feelings happens every day in early learning classrooms. Whether it be a conversation about moments in play, events in stories or when our young learners are unwell. We regular ask children to communicate their emotions. We are skilled at using signs, symbols and language to scaffold these conversations. There are years upon years of quality PSED resources to help us plan meaningful activities to build emotional literacy too.

“Children talk about how they and others show feelings, talk about their own and others’ behaviour, and its consequences, and know that some behaviour is unacceptable.” Early Learning Goal: Managing Feelings and Behaviour

“They show sensitivity to others’ needs and feelings, and form positive relationships with adults and other children.” Early Learning Goal: Making Relationships

“They know that other children don’t always enjoy the same things, and are sensitive to this.” Early Learning Goal: People and Communities

“They represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role play and stories.” Early Learning Goal: Being Imaginative

“They answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about their experiences and in response to stories or events.” Early Learning Goal: Speaking

Emotional understanding is referred to throughout Early Years Outcomes and the goals that 5 year olds should achieve by the end of the first year of school. So this year for Safer Internet Day, let’s talk about feelings when using devices and communicate how we might feel during different uses.

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Celebrating Earth Day with Oliver Jeffers

@MarcWithersey art, Drawing, early years, iPads, Outdoors, photography, Understanding the World , , , ,

Screenshot 2019-04-28 at 13.26.35Next year, Earth Day will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary. Back in 1970, millions of people took to the streets to protest the impact of 150 years of industrial development. 49 years later, the campaign continues in 192 countries with over a billion people participating.

This year, children’s author and artist Oliver Jeffers and Apple Education designed an education project for Earth Day to inspire young children to think about the future of their local area.

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Oliver’s message was simple. Snap a photo of your environment, draw how you’d like to see it in the future and share your idea with the world. He describes himself as an optimist in a short trailer about the project, explaining that the world becomes a better place because people it imagine it that way. You can watch the trailer here.

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My class watched the trailer and we paused the clip in a few places to talk about the message or discuss the whimsical sketches Oliver makes. I then modelled to the children how to take a photograph of our outdoor area then use the mark-up tools in ‘Edit’ to create our own images to share.

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Adapting Stories With Photography and Drawing

@MarcWithersey art, Drawing, early years, Outdoors, photography, writing , , ,

Having cameras in our mobile devices has changed the way we capture, edit and share photographs. Shooting an image outdoors now means we can crop it, adjust it and share it immediately afterwards. Whilst we are amazed at this as adults, the young children in our classrooms see this as normal and it’s a regular life for them. Children are exposed to cameras in almost every device they can put their hands on so we have a responsibility to teach children how to take and use photography for a particular purpose, otherwise their devices, and yours, become full of repeated, useless images like these:

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In a week themed around adapting the story of The Gingerbread Man, Reception children took their iPads to Woodland Workshop to capture and edit story scenes for their own runaway food stories. Previous learning has focused on taking close-up photographs outdoors or using the camera to capture story scenes of a naughty bus puppet misbehaving in the woodlands.

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The Rich Potential of Young Children’s Drawing

@MarcWithersey art, Drawing, early years, English, photography, writing , , , , ,

I’m always excited to hear from followers of my blog and connecting with readers through Twitter or by e-mail. Recently, teachers from Mere Green Primary have shared ways they have been using the Young Children Can Create books that I published with Kristi Meeuwse and Jason Milner in August 2018. This blog post has been written by Terri Coombs and Rebecca Murray from Mere Green Primary School and shares the impact that The Rich Potential of Young Children’s Drawing book has had on their early years practice.

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Terri Coombs is the IT Lead for Mere Green and SLE in Computing and IT across the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership. She has 20 years teaching experience which includes 10 years of leading IT and is passionate about using technologies to inspire creative teaching & learning and enable all children to engage.
Rebecca Murray is the IT Lead for EY at Mere Green, she has 5 years of teaching experience in Early Years and promotes the use of iPads to encourage levels of independence.
Mere Green Primary School is an outstanding two form, family orientated school. We are driven to ‘make a difference’ for all our children, through support, nurture and trust. In addition to our mainstream children, we also have 20 places for children with statements for speech, language and communication from North Birmingham, who have enhanced speech provision across the school day. We are a fully inclusive primary school, which reflects the society in which we live.  We have a whole school vision for embedded use of IT to enhance authentic learning opportunities.

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A Frosty Photo Walk and the Impact on Writing.

@MarcWithersey art, early years, photography, Understanding the World, writing , , , ,

Teaching young children to take photographs is one of my favourite uses of technology in the early years. The potential of children’s photography is rich in learning opportunities for many areas of learning and a purpose which supports all aspects of the Enabling Environment principle.

Supporting Exploration

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The cold weeks of January and the frosty mornings gave perfect scenes for outdoor photography at our Woodland Workshop so our iPads came with us. Children were challenged to take close up photographs of the frost. They needed to get closer, and even closer, then wait for the camera to focus before pressing the shutter button. It needed a steady hand and firm grip but the children needed an artistic eye too. Children had to look closely at the frosty environment and notice patterns. A good photograph works with the rule of thirds and the more photography children admire the more their eyes are trained to capture good images. Photography is an opportunity for children to explore the beauty around them.

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Draw and Tell app

@MarcWithersey Apps, art, Child Initiated Learning, Drawing, early years, English, iPads , , , ,

Here’s a spotlight on an app I discovered Apple’s Get Started with Code teacher guide. This is a mark making and story telling app which crayons, paint brushes, stickers and templates. It’s free, it’s lots of fun and it’s another tool to engage children in early writing skills.

The launch screen has 3 options:

  • Blank paper (start a new picture)
  • Colouring (access to templates)
  • Your drawings (saved work)

The screenshots in the tiles above show you what happens as you move through the ‘Blank Paper’ option and begin a new drawing. There are heaps of tools available, all of the tools you would expect in a digital painting package (including a rainbow crayon!).

Why not paint, draw and mark make with real art tools though?

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One Best Photo Gallery

@MarcWithersey art, Collaboration, early years, Outdoors, photography ,

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  Saturday 17th June

Here is a day that has been marked on my calendar for several months, but also a day that 2 years ago, I never have thought would have been marked on my calendar!

One Best Photo launched at Sherwood Pines.

What is One Best Photo?

This project came about through a partnership with myself and the Learning Rangers at Sherwood Pines. In 2015, I met the Rangers to talk about ways in which I am using technology outdoors on field trips to their forest. For several years I had been taking classes of Foundation Stage children (aged 4 – 5) and leading photography walks with them.

Why?

Children have access to cameras in devices and photography is huge part of their every day lives. We now have a responsibility to teach them camera skills and what it means to be a photographer. If we don’t, then this will continue to happen on our devices when our young learners use them…

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Who wouldn’t want their art work to sing?

@MarcWithersey art, Design, early years, English , , , ,

Physical to digital work is transforming our art area this year, thanks to Cathy Hunt. It’s a simple idea which builds cameras in to your art area. Children move between the iPad and their physical art work to develop their ideas. Cathy has a host of lesson ideas for all ages on her website, and it’s been great fun building this way of working in to our art activities.

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Kaleidoscope Art

@MarcWithersey art, early years, photography ,

At the Apple Distinguished Educators Institute in Berlin I got to meet Cathy Hunt, an extraordinary art teacher from Australia. Cathy must have shared 30 or more inspiring art lessons with us in just a 3 minutes. She passionately demonstrating how we need to ‘pull down the barriers between technology, traditional tools and tactile materials’. And to this effectively, Cathy says that it all starts with the camera.

FullSizeRender-2-300x300.jpg“Cathy is a well-known advocate for the creative integration of technology in education, developing ground-breaking programs for students around the world that combine hands-on, tactile and collaborative ways of working with mobile devices. Cathy is probably best known for her work on iPadartroom.com, a home base for educators to engage with innovative ideas, resources and technology for learning in that combines paint and pixels. Her site has grown to become the ‘go-to’ resource for teachers leveraging mobile devices for creativity.”

 

This year I’ve packed my creative toolkit full to the top with Cathy’s ideas and giving it a go. At the beginning of the year I plan a variety of activities where my new cohort of 4 year olds can get to grips using the camera on our iPads and mastering the basics. I love this start because it gets them mobile with the devices from the get-go. They practise holding the iPad securely and moving between the camera app and photos app to find their images. Thanks to Cathy, I’ve now found a way to link their digital creativity to physical art work.

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