How hard is art with nature?

sourced from http://www.racheous.com/reggio-inspired/rocks-provocations/

This is so stunning. I always admire artwork inspired by nature. This is such a simple yet effective way of looking at patterns / design / shapes and nature in a creative way. 

Sunshine created by 5 year old

 Smiling cat designed by 4 year old. 

Construction - Learning???

 

sourced from pinterest

Mmmmmmm! What could you possibly learn with this??? 

 form 

structure

strength in design

shapes

social communities

collaborative design 

oral language

story writing

Mmmmmm!

Character development

found image on pinterest

What a great way to integrate speech bubbles character description and deeper features for writing.

Interest Board

Bottle top art Imagine the oral language you can develop with this board displayed in your room. Rodger Schultz has his own website for more information to link to real life artist. http://rodgerschultz.blogspot.co.nz/p/faq.html

Bottle Top Bugs

Bottle top art - awesome fine motor skills. Could link well into retell, creative story telling, and developing oral language skills. Each bug has its own personality. Extend the children to think about the needs of their bug - house, sleeping bag, transport.

Try making cakes instead of bugs.

http://pinterest.com/hilarywhite3/bottle-tops-plastic/

Chantel's Sunflowers

Last week I had a wonderful reliever in my class who provided the children with a large outline of a sunflower. The aim was to use ripped pieces of yellow and green paper to fill their flower outlines. They decided their goal was keeping in the lines which they all achieved very well. This one belongs to Chantel.

The next day at the writing station Chantel decided she would try to draw her own sunflower by herself. She also worked alongside another student to help her achieve the same goal. As you can see they used felts to colour in their beautiful sunflower sketches.

Day three at action stations, Chantel wanted to extend her idea further and drew a different sunflower design and used the collage technique to fill it. This time she worked alone. I can't wait to see what she will do next. I might aim her towards some technology and use the ipad or camera to create a different image again.

Making retell fun!

The Big Book 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' is a great ignitor for sequencing, and mapping skills.

Providing children with the rough outline of a map the children love to retell the story using pictures and symbols. At sharing time it is valuable retell practise.  Many children creating their own stories, especially pirate treasure maps. On children drew a map with directions on how to get to his grandparents place from his home.

Sparklebox Visuals

Some more great ideas 

Pinterest