During this Wonderlab, we as a group wanted to try out creative stations with kindergarten, by having them exploring different materials in their table groups. In the past we have tried to give the Kinder students prompts for our lessons and found that they preferred to play and explore with given materials. These creation stations cater to the students' needs to create without the goal of creating a finished product. This group of students is still in a stage where they're trying to understand the materials put in front of them.
The four stations were masking tape resist with marker, oil based clay, oil pastels, and a 3D creation station that utilized cotton balls and q-tips. Each station had an assigned instructor that introduced the possibilities of each medium to the students. This also allowed for more one on one time watching the students explore materials, while also being able to ask more questions about how they saw the materials. The students took well to exploring freely without prompts with the materials at the station, with us teachers only intervening during times of peer conflicts and or misuse of materials. We saw a number of students going beyond just the paper we gave them to create on, at one table a student was creating a tape bridge utilizing the masking tape at the station with the masking tape and markers.
The four stations were masking tape resist with marker, oil based clay, oil pastels, and a 3D creation station that utilized cotton balls and q-tips. Each station had an assigned instructor that introduced the possibilities of each medium to the students. This also allowed for more one on one time watching the students explore materials, while also being able to ask more questions about how they saw the materials. The students took well to exploring freely without prompts with the materials at the station, with us teachers only intervening during times of peer conflicts and or misuse of materials. We saw a number of students going beyond just the paper we gave them to create on, at one table a student was creating a tape bridge utilizing the masking tape at the station with the masking tape and markers.
Inquiry/Learning Target:
Essential Understandings:
Skills:
- How does playing with new materials allow one to better understand them?
- New mediums and tools lead to new ideas
- Different experimentations lead to different discoveries.
- Artists and designers test different ideas to discover new potentials.
Essential Understandings:
- Artists and designers play, discover, and create with new materials to understand mediums, tools, and creative potential of each.
Skills:
- Listening to instructions
- Sharing materials
- Creative problem solving
- Respecting others
- Cleaning materials
- Taking care of materials
- Keeping items separate from each other
- Keeping area clean
- Taking risks
- Explaining ideas
- Sharing discoveries with others
In these images, a student discovered the utilization of different materials yields different effects that cannot be created as easily without the objects. They even tested the replication with different colors to find that the clay responds similarly with different colors.
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"What happens when you squish it with your elbow?"
"It makes it round and flat!" When one student made a discovery, word quickly spread and everyone was testing out the different capabilities of this material. They tested how squishing with multiple elbows yielded different shapes than a single elbow, and how different amounts of pressure affected the thickness of the clay. |
While playing and exploring with masking tape resist, this student discover that he could apply one layer of resist, remove the tape and then repeat the process over and over to create a more interesting effect!
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This student saw a different potential in the masking tape. Using it as more of a sculptural material, he created a system of what he called "bridges" under, on and around his table.
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This student connected the nature of the masking tape to, "A net that catches fish because daddy catches fish". She criss-crossed the tape to resemble the fibers of a fishing net.
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"What did you do for the background?”
“I did the sky with some clouds” The student created a drawing of their friends along with the spelling above the drawing depicting their friend. They utilized the oil pastels to create a meaningful drawing of something important to them during the time, and it was that of their friends. |
“Can you shown me how you're making mud?"
“Its all crayon,” This student explored with the texture of the oil pastels when they rubbed it across the spiral of their sketchbook. Utilizing the color of the crayon and the texture it made after the rubbings to “create mud" |