What a great warm welcome I received in the P4 Classroom from the children and their Teacher, Mrs Hughes!

Our project takes as its starting point: FEELING….

I introduced myself and showed the children two drawings I had made – one from 10 years ago – as sort of self portrait with a dress:

We had a wonderful discussion about ‘feeling’ after I told the children the drawing featured a partially drawn dress which I had worn every summer for over 20 years… and finally packed it away – it was made of linen and embroidered with colourful flowers but had become very threadbare….

I even found the dress and brought it along to show the children…

      

I explained I had good feelings and memories attached to the dress but it was also drawn as a way of saying ‘goodbye’ to my youth, so feelings were both happy and sad.

The children enjoyed touching the fabric and talked about linen and how it was made and that it had a good feeling for your skin as Mrs Hughes said it helps your skin breathe….

The second drawing was one made more recently about running and moving or more specifically about not being able to move…

On this real visit as we discussed ideas and undertook activities, alot of ideas and interesting thoughts have been raised….  One of these thoughts offered by Keighan,  asked whether FEELING (when we touch something) has anything to do with FEELING that we feel inside (happy, sad, etc).

We tried some activities that explored the idea of NOT BEING ABLE TO TOUCH SOMETHING. First the idea of not being in touch with the paper or the drawing tool so half the class used charcoal on very long sticks, drawing on  paper taped to the floor and half the class used pencils attached to shorter sticks at the table.

           

I had suggested to the children that they should not draw anything specifically, but  just explore making marks and lines… At first we made our marks very very light…

then very very dark…

Putting the sticks away, the children were happy to actually get their hands dirty and touch the paper and charcoal with their hands!! Interestingly the children said they enjoyed the freedom of making any  lines and marks they wanted… no one told them what to draw…..

      

We next tried moving around the classroom without touching anyone else or any furniture or art work!! Very tricky in a small space…

Our last activities involved using a blindfold, so we covered our eyes and drew something we couldn’t see……. we tried to respond to the texture and shape and the feeling it gave us…

   

   

   

   

   

   

      

         

Finally the children had brought into class an object from home and we mixed all these up so that they wouldn’t be able to guess what they had to draw… the results were very interesting.

   

   

   

   

  

Thank you P4 and Mrs Hughes!