Calendar art work

Welcome back to all our children and their families, we are going to have a great term 4! We also welcome lots of new tamariki to our Mairtown Whanau, and warmly welcome Zair back after maternity leave – nau mai haere mai.

This week we have begun our art work for the 2013 calendars. This is a fundraiser which we did for the first time last year and was a great success. All the children have the opportunity to produce a piece of art which will be sent off  and made into cards, calendars or diaries (they make fantastic Christmas presents – more details to come at a later date!).

Art is a strong focus in our curriculum, and children are presented with opportunities to experiment with a wide range of media and materials on a daily basis. It seemed only fitting then that any money from this fundraiser, along with those raised from our art auction scheduled for March next year, will go towards an up-grade of our Kindergarten art studio.

For this year’s calendar art we have decided to use Hundertwasser as our inspiration and provocation for the children’s work, using the media of black pen and dye. Both Hundertwasser’s work along with and pen and dye are materials that our children work with frequently and so are familiar and comfort with.

Before we began our work, each child was offered the opportunity to look through a book on Hundertwasser’s work and choose a piece of his art from which they would like to draw their inspiration when creating their own piece.

Hundertwasser's work is very distinctive with a rich and intense use of colour; this encouraged the children to engage in interesting and diverse conversations about what they each saw in the paintings.

“As children view works of art, they will naturally interpret what they see based on their personal experiences…when children construct their own knowledge and meanings about what they see they become active participants in the learning process, rather than passive ones” (Mulcahey, 2009)

After black pen and dye had been applied, some children observed how Hundertwasser often used gold or silver to emphasise certain elements of his work. Of course, after spotting this we got out our own silver pens for some of the children to highlight aspects of their art.

We had to dry our dye work first though – what better way than with a hairdryer!

“Art is seen as useful for enhancing children’s cognitive processes, involving children in problem-solving, thinking and using symbol systems to record their thoughts, ideas and feelings” (Wright, 2003).

Eve drew inspiration from Hundertwasser's painting titled 'Waiting houses'...

 ...whilst Katie focused in on a small corner of a Hundertwasser painting, one with a small but vibrant circular shape.

I am sure you’ll agree that the work produced so far is beautiful and the calendars will look spectacular; I can’t wait to see what all our other tamariki will produce over the next few weeks.

If you know any artists, or are an artist yourself who would like to donate a piece to be auctioned at our art auction next March please contact the Kindergarten directly – thank you.

“As the sun colours flowers, so does art colour life” John Lubbock

Christine