On my return to Rosen class it was lovely to see the ‘treasure
map’ that we had made enhancing the story cave in the classroom. The children had added extra drawings and thoughts to it reflecting their ideas. It’s setting seems particularly appropriate as ‘story’ was the startpoint that the children had come up with for our making activity.
For our next session I planned to extend our mapping into the outdoor space, to enable the children to experiment with three dimensional forms, and to introduce a new sensory theme.
We started by looking again at the landscapes imagery, to which I had added some interesting pictures of different weather patterns, some of which were very dramatic! The children really enjoyed these; ‘…looks like it’s on fire!’, ‘water thunder’…’like roses’, and it sparked their imagination.
For the making activities I wanted to keep things open ended, so that the children could choose what to make and what materials to select for the task. It was a really beautiful sunny day so we were able to lay everything out in the playground and move around freely.
The children were very engaged and were initiating their active learning by independently making decisions about what to make, what to use, how to start, whether to work on their own or whether to team up with others to work collaboratively. It was lovely to see such a creative variety of ideas happening, and that the children clearly felt confident about learning in this way.
The children also had the opportunity to create their own miniature 3D ‘island’ collages, using clay and other objects to give form to their ideas. Claire was really impressed with the air of ‘quiet busyness’ as the children explored expressed their imagination through colour form and materials: ‘I want to put footprints in leading to the mountain’.. ‘making a rainbow’…’first I put the mirror, the dark mirror, then I put the buttons…’
When installed in the outdoor space these created a sensory landscape of fantastic textures, colours, and intricate details.
By the end of the day the space had been transformed with hanging ‘weather’ interpretations, ‘a butterfly show’, and a rainbow of tactile objects….
Working with Rosen class has been a wonderful experience and I’m sure the seeds of creativity I have sown will continue to grow and be nurtured by Claire and her fantastic support staff…*******
gizellakwarburton reflections 