This is undoubtably the strangest moment: sitting waiting for the children to arrive. It is so quiet and calm here. I have no visual communication with the classroom and there is no sound either. It’s just me and the computer and my notes, my materials… Occasionally the preview screen catches my eye when I check for movement on the other end.
Any moment now, they will arrive into the room, sound and video will be switched on, and we’ll be in the middle of it.
I wonder if they realise how strange it is to be suddenly connected and pulled into their world? It really is a unique experience.
Today started with a conversation about the BFG what kind of character he was. The children told me a bit about his work with dreams and that he was kind and helpful. I heard some feedback from the parents and relatives visit: one child was brought to Mc Donald’s after school for a treat because the work was so impressive.
We made an extra-detailed plan for today because our connection has been a bit flaky. This meant that if we got cut off the children and Mrs Wilson would be able to carry on regardless. The session started by laying out the work from last week and everyone walked around and looked at everyone else’s work. The each person took a sticky label and they used it to leave a comment for one of their classmates telling them something they noticed that was interesting or successful about that work. Then the children went back to their work and read what their classmates had written. We shared some of the comments and then the children had a good look at the artwork and decided if they agreed or disagreed with the comments. We thought about what we might do differently if we were going to do similar work again. This was a really useful time -I think that the children saw so much in each other’s work and got a lot of ideas from the subsequent discussion. It will be interesting to see if there is an effect on work because of it.
There were going to be a lot of experiments so we labelled the pages first. We played a lot with the water part of watercolour, seeing the effect of adding more water and less paint, less water and more paint and various combinations and permutations. Before the practical part, each experiment was described and the children made predictions about what they thought that the paint might do on the page.
Here are the experiments that we undertook:
Experiment 1: Dry page, dry brush no water Try to use paint.
Dry page, slightly wet brush, spread paint on page, set brush down, tilt page.
Does anything happen to the paint?
Can you see through it?
Experiment 2: Dry page, wet paint,
Add drops of paint to page, lift page and tilt with hands to move the paint.
Experiment 3: Dry page, wet paint,
Add drops of paint to page, use brush to move the paint.
Experiment 4: Wet page, wet paint,
Add drops of paint to page, lift page and tilt with hands to move the paint.
Experiment 5: Wet page, wet paint,
Add drops of paint to page, use brush to move the paint.
Descriptions from some of the children about how the paint moved on the page:
like a volcano
like lava
like a river
dropping like rain
like a hedgehog putting out spikes
growing in the wind
explosion
like fireworks
Although there was plenty of structure within the session it was clear to the children that there was no right or wrong outcome, just lots of experimentation. We could hear exclamations of ‘ooh’, ‘wow’ and ‘whoah’ as the children saw the variations. It is so exciting when possibilities like these unlock in front of our eyes: combinations of design and chance, accident and choice.
More photos of relatives from children -one was taken in Germany. We looked for likenesses again and talked about the ideas of changing over time. Lovely images.
