Art Class: Clay Food I

In tandem with International Dot Day, the children painted paper plates to go with their clay food. As a tuning in, I asked the children to draw me the answers to these questions on post-its:

Food is a great conversation starter. There is always food during celebrations. Be it festive seasons, weddings, birthdays, parties, housewarming or vernissage. There is no lack of intagrammable dishes in images to arouse your appetite. In short, people don't just eat when they are hungry. We are also social eaters unless you are looking for what founder, Marina Van Goor, has designed - Eenmaal, a restaurant only for solo diners. 

I've learnt more about the children through the food that best depicts their culture. It was also interesting to find out about their favourite food and snacks which tell me a lot based on their food choices and lifestyles.   

The children responded very well to images - either digital or printouts. We started by looking at our school location on Google Map and found that many restaurants including fast food eateries are strategically situated near our school. We discussed our favourite food, festive foods and food we need to eat in moderation. There was also a lesson where the children manipulate the clay into specific shapes so that they can experience the colour change and describe the difference in 2D and 3D shapes. We observed the shapes, colours and they did a few sketches.

Art Class: The Colour Experiment

Behind the scene...

Substitute palette paper with freezer paper. I got mine from the supermarket. It works as well, is a cheaper alternative and you can customise the dimensions. In this case, I'm using my art room tiles (x2) as my measuring ruler :D

For my P3 pupils who will be learning about Diversity, we began the class with a story The Colors of Us by Karen Katz. This unit introduces socially-sensitive issues about racial identity through self-portraits. While most of the children in my school are mostly Asians, a number of them belong to cross-cultural families or second-generation immigrants. When we held discussions about skin colours, a boy aired his misconception that a person's culture can be determined by his/ her skin colour. Another talked about the evolutionary reason of the skin responding to the sun. 

I collected the lids of the paper reams and use them to distribute acrylic paint to the groups. Throughout the lesson, no water is needed. The children will clean their paintbrushes on the cleaning paper (which are essentially the wrappers of the A4 printing papers) and throw them away after use.  

The children were given a worksheet to record their tests and observations like an artist/ scientist. Their task is to try to get a shade of skin colour but not necessarily theirs. We had a discussion of some of the children's observations and getting them to articulate their thoughts instead of just doing the experiment as a means to an end which I think is more meaningful. Painting is definitely interesting, it encourages sensitivity to colours by rejecting the idea of teaching children culturally-agreed object colours.

Art is more than merely the expression of ideas and expression. In the development of artistic competence and enjoyment, children are encouraged to explore the potential of materials. Their ability to control these processes are learned through the freedom of spontaneous expression which can deepen their understanding, failing which, would produce a sense of incompetence and frustration (Robinson, K. 2008). 

Last month's issue of Nat Geo is such a coincidence!

Listen to photographer Angélica Dass on how her work challenges the way we think about skin colour and ethnic identity here.


Dr Ken Robinson, 2008. The arts in schools: Principles, practice and provision. Lightning Source, UK.

Art Class: Emotions

When people say that you have to know your students as a teacher, it's really not just about understanding their ability and skills in executing the artwork. Often, it's also about understanding the emotional aspect. Dr Tim Elmore, author of Generation iY: Our last chance to save their future, wrote that "most young people are advanced biologically and emotionally backward". In other words, their emotional maturity is not as advanced as their biological, cognitive and social aspects. In 2003, MOE introduced social and emotional learning (SEL) into schools to improve the current status of students' social skills. I've met many children who are so advance in their academics but they struggle to self-regulate their behaviour. On the other end of the spectrum, I have children who are so uncertain of themselves that they tried to seek my approval at every stage of their artmaking process. Thus, I like to incorporate discussions about human's emotional responses such as anger and fear of failures. 

In this unit, we discussed human emotions through Pablo Piccaso's The Weeping Woman (1937) and Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893). Conversations revolved the artist's chosen palette and non-verbal language of humans and animals. We started with blind contour drawing and the children worked in pairs to observe each other. The drawer poked their pencil through a paper plate to prevent them from looking at their drawings. They were encouraged to do drawings of their friend's front view, side profile and a freestyle. Next, they do individual drawings of a self-portrait by looking in the mirror each. 

Art Class: Patterns Around Us [Part II]

The P3 children are transferring their pattern studies into a mixed media artwork. Their observations of patterns are from the school environment can be read here. They did watercolour resist work by drawing patterns with oil pastels first and applying a layer of black watercolour. I find that there is a fine line between choosing to give explicit instructions in art lessons and allowing children to discover for themselves. I will further elaborate on this point in my subsequent post. In these lessons, explicit instructions are necessary to ensure safety in the art room even though some of the instructions might seem trivial. We should never make assumptions in our teaching. Occasionally, I will still get a child who would fill up his water container to the brim and other children would help to remind him of the right amount of water that goes into it. Gaining the confidence to carry the filled containers from the basins to their workstations can easily be overlooked. Other instructions such as using sufficient pressure on the oil pastels and getting the paintbrushes to hold enough colour pigment before painting especially when we are using the watercolour cake are just some habits of mind the children have to adopt and practise regularly.  

Art Class: Patterns Around Us

In the lower primary Mathematics syllabus, the children have learnt about shapes and angles in the Geometry sub-strand. Revisiting these concepts about Patterns meant that lesson has to be applicable. The children looked for Patterns around the canteen. They had to spot for repeated shapes, lines and colours by sketching them. Next, we played a game in class where an image of a close up pattern of object is shown and they had to guess the object. The children also used DIY Tangrams and combine their pieces to make a bigger image.

These circular plastics were the byproducts of their school files :D

Photo credit: Ms Candice