Art - Inventions

Transdisciplinary Theme: Where we are in place and time

Central Idea: There are similarities and differences between the way people lived long ago and the way people live today.

• Inventions have been made that impact the things we do
• changes in daily life

This Friday, we explored what an invention means for our art activity. Here is the clip of the book "I am inventing an invention" by Grosset & Dunlap and Hill, Samantha. In the video, the children discussed about how peopled live in the olden days with the inventions we have nowadays. 

After we watched the video, the children were asked "how do you become an inventor?" 

Mila -"we decorate."

Cameron - "we can build things!"

Damon - "you need to be fast!"

Then, we had an hands-on art activity to make an invention plan. An open-ended free collage helped the children to have a visualization of their ideas on a piece of paper.  

Being a good communicator, the children verbalized their invention ideas with the teacher and their friends.

"What is this part?"

"My invention is a pen that would follow my to school!"

This is a bike that has a vacuum at the back!

This is my art work!

It was interesting to see that many children adding new functions to the items that they were familiar to make their inventions. 

Happy Valentines Day!

It's Valentines Day this Friday! Thanks to all the families for sharing wonderful treats and fruit with everyone at Creative Minds. As an inspiration for art activity , Anamaria read the book, "In My Heart" by Molly Bang, to the children. The story was about the special connections between parents and children. 

Here, we used pipe-cleaners and coloured beads to make our Valentines craft. The children chose and threaded coloured beads; then, the teachers helped the children to shape the pipe-cleaners into heart shapes. 
It was really sweet to hear some children wanted to bring the heart-shaped decoration home for daddy and mommy.

Art - Black & White Photo and Ink Wash Painting

Transdisciplinary Theme: Where we are in place and time

Central Idea: There are similarities and differences between the way people lived long ago and the way people live today.
Lines of Inquiry:

• There are similarities and differences between past and present.
• inventions have been made that impact the things we do.
• Changes in daily life.

This video was shown to the children as an inspiration of the art activity today. "What do you notice in this video? What colour do you see on those photos ?" I asked. "Black ,white and gray!" the children answered. As well, they noticed there were different kinds of gray colour in the pictures. 

Here we started to explore how the black-and-white photos were different from the coloured photos we have nowadays. The children wondered why the photos had to be printed in a darkroom and why people wash the photos with, while we watched the video. "That was a lot of work to print a photo in the olden days!" both the children and teachers thought. 

Ink Wash Painting, an East Asia type of brush painting, also uses black and different shades of gray to present a picture. Connecting with black-and-white photos, we simply used black paint and water to create shades from deep black to silvery gray.
The children enjoyed creating pictures with only black, white and shades of gray. 

After this art activity, the children became more aware of the change of colour using. In the afternoon some children noticed how there were books with colourful pictures and books with only black-and-white pictures.