Doing things differently is very important when you are dedicated to student-centred learning – and so, each year our teachers attend several training workshops of their choosing. After returning from a workshop where other teachers shared ways of bringing art into the classroom, they piqued the preschoolers’ interest and set about not just to learn about the masters – but to imitate their techniques as well!
After learning about Wassily Kandinsky’s Concentric Circles (see the original here), our children were inspired! Our young Kandinskys painted the Spring like this:
Another day, at the classroom meeting where children discuss their emerging skills, they identified that cutting and pasting was an area where some of their peers needed more practice. They naturally looked at the Masters for inspiration… and found out about Monsieur Henri Matisse. Here are our children’s works based on the papiers collés technique:
The teachers produced a short bio of Matisse to help the parents – as well as the teachers themselves – be better able to appreciate the children’s work. Everybody learns!