Drawing

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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The Rich Potential of Young Children’s Photography

@MarcWithersey Drawing, early years, Early Years, iPads, photography, Technology, Understanding the World, 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, which I published with Kristi Meeuwse and Jason Milner in August 2018. This is the second blog post which has been written by Terri Coombs and Rebecca Murray from Mere Green Primary School. In this post, they share the impact that The Rich Potential of Young Children’s Photography guide 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 Early Years 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 entry, 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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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.

Screenshot 2019-02-16 at 18.30.14.png

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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Your First Class Book Project

@MarcWithersey early years, Early Years, English, writing , , , ,

Creating class books is something I remember doing as a child in school. We would all contribute a page by drawing and writing. Every member of the class had something to put in and our book would be displayed proudly in the classroom library. Do you remember those kinds of activities too?

They were very manual tasks, with a lot of potential for practising literacy skills but gave so much pride in our work too! The sense of a real audience for our class book was so motivating.

The problem was, we only ever made 1 book and if you wanted to show it anyone, they had to come in to the library. What if your class book could be shared in an unlimited capacity, to anyone, anywhere?

It’s now possible with Pages book templates and creation tools.

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Pages is a free app from Apple for your iPad and to make a class book, you only need 1 iPad! This is great first activity for book making in an early years classroom, where each child can add their own page to the class book.

 

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Young Children Can Create

@MarcWithersey Apps, Child Initiated Learning, Drawing, Early Years, Film, iPads, Leadership and Managemant, Music, photography, Technology, Understanding the World, Video , , , , , , , , ,

In England we teach young children (Birth to 5 years old) from a non-statutory curriculum now known as Early Years Outcomes (formally Development Matters). The curriculum is structured around 7 areas of learning but themed on A Unique Child, Parent Partnerships, Enabling Environments and Learning & Development. Learning across these themes, principles and areas of learning are woven together through The Characteristics of Effective Learning.

Development Matters, and Early Years Outcomes, explain that theEE theme Enabling Environments theme should ‘value all people’ and all learning. Yet there is a division in the early years community about the role of technology in learning. Our young children have access to technology in the home and there are an abundance of reports and opinions claiming screen time is a contributing factor towards low attainment in physical, social and language development. For this reason, there are settings who switch off to technology provision.

Technology is the one strand in our early years curriculum, and throughout the National Curriculum, where the application in the learning environment is different to the application at home:

  • talking at home is similar to talking at school,
  • sharing at home is similar to sharing at school,
  • reading at home is similar to reading at school,
  • numbers at home is similar to numbers at school,
  • whereas technology at home is different to technology at school.

At home, children (and adults!) watch TV and video rather than film movies ourselves. We use the internet at home to browse and shop. We more often choose to listen to music rather than make it. We look at photographs at home rather than take them. We regularly relax in front of screens. 

At school and nursery, the Early Learning Goal for Technology states that children should ‘select and use technology for particular purposes’. In the National Curriculum for Key Stage 1 this extends to digital skills such as using images, video and sound for creative projects.

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Photo 1: Drawing characters on to photographs. Photo 2: Looking for habitats.

We should be teaching children how to create with technology, in meaningful ways that are cross-curricular where ‘experiences respond individual needs’ and interests.

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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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Our first week with iPad – Mastering the Basics!

@MarcWithersey Child Initiated Learning, early years, iPads, photography , , ,

I came away from the Apple Distinguished Educators Institute brimming with ideas about photography and why we need to enhance learning by giving children a camera.

FullSizeRender-2-300x300.jpgCathy Hunt, of the iPad Art Room, shared the idea that “it all starts with the camera, because from this launching point we can support students to develop their ability to communicate”. In her classroom she sees how cameras help children ‘see their world differently’ and that their ‘connected cameras are always collecting’.

 

dave-profile.jpgDave Caleb, a digital literacy coach in South East Asia, explains “images are an incredible medium. They transcend language barriers. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, you can read a photograph”. He reflects that ‘your camera roll is your story’ and now that students have access to devices, they have a powerful story telling device at their finger tips. He concluded that ‘We need to teach our students to capture powerful images. It is a literacy we need to teach. It is tied to what it means to be human’.

Both of these presentations at the ADE Institute support the reasons why I start and end with photography each year my Foundation Stage classes. At the end of last year I published the ‘One Best Photo’ resources with The Forestry Commission but each September I wonder how I will progress my new class of 4 year olds to this level of creativity on their iPads. And each September, the 4 year olds amaze me!

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