In our youngest classroom, the students are just 13 to 20 months old. Some might ask if using paints are worth it, when a mess is inevitable. However, the Silver Room teachers know that there is a lot of value in that mess.
- Making marks (drawing, painting, writing) with any medium gives a sense of control to the mark maker. You can communicate something, an emotion, an idea, an expression. It feels powerful.
- Painting and drawing allow us to explore colors, shades of color, and help us understand what colors pull us in. We start thinking about how colors make us feel.
- Mark making allows us to practice using tools that strengthen the finger, hand, and wrist muscles. Mark making in different positions and stances strengthens the shoulder and core muscles, such as when you’re lying on your tummy to draw.
- It’s fun, and having fun is actually pretty important.
- Mark making is creative and over time helps develop an attitude of creativity.
This fall, when beginning our work mark making with the youngest toddlers, we used watercolor paint. Watercolors play with light, translucency, saturation, and shade in a way that reminds us of autumn light through changing leaves. We wanted to draw the attention of the children to these aspects in the world around them, so we chose found natural materials as our brushes: dried flower heads, pine cones, seed pods, stems, and sticks. We chose autumn colors that we saw in the trees and flowers right here on our playground: yellow, orange, red, brown, and green.
It seemed that the most interesting part for children was dipping their “brush” into the paint. After some initial dipping, we showed them how to make marks on the paper. Dried snakeroot flowers made little polka dot shapes. The sticks made the most intentional and visible marks. Pine cones were tricky to dip and made puddles that we could push around. Iris pods allowed us to slap the puddles and make splash marks!
One of the challenges of watercolors is the need to rewet your brush frequently. The children are still making arm movement based in the shoulder, a push rather than a dip. This almost always knocks over whatever vessel they are working with and paint containers are no exception. One student sat on the paper and knocked over the green paint in her attempts at dipping her brush. She nibbled on her paintbrush, making her mouth green.
It made us curious. What do the children understand about painting? Do they make connections between the paint in the container and the paint on the paper? Do they see the brush as the connection between the two places paint appears? Do they see their movements in the paint?
After repeating the process for a number of days, we reflected on the children’s work. We believe the watercolors paint was so watery and the natural materials so textured that Silver friends could not see the paint on the “brush”. There was a disconnect in their comprehension of how the paint transferred from bowl to paper.
To get a better grasp of how everyone is understanding paint and its tools, we switched to tempera and sponges and brushes on paper. Tempera paint provides vibrant color. It tends to be less malleable than watercolors, and its thick texture and bright colors make it a high impact medium for mark making.
The students showed us right away that they needed to understand the properties of both paint and tools before they could begin to focus on mark making. One student squished the spongeful of paint between his thumb and fingers, watching it squish out and bubble with the pressure. He seemed to ask “What is this? What does this do? What am I going to do with it?”.
Another student redips her sponge, showing us she knows the sponge is the carrier of paint. She squeezes the sponge between thumb and fingers, watching it smoosh.
Repeat exposure to the same activity builds familiarity with the children, and deepens their experience. On the first day, one student took one swipe of paint and was finished. By the third day, she seemed ready to take on more, spending over 10 minutes working on a painting. Perhaps it was the choice of color (yellow vs. red) or perhaps her previous exploration gave her enough experience to get comfortable.
One student spends much of her time at the easel stirring the paint. She seems to be considering what this substance is, what it can do, and what she wants to do with it. She concentrates her paint in one small area, refusing the offer of a block to stand on so she can reach higher.
Art is agency made visible. For a child, painting says “There was a cup of paint. I moved it from the cup to the paper. My movements with the paint are visible right there on the paper. The place where I chose to make an upward stroke looks like a bird flying. And here you see my choice to change from red to yellow paint.” Every choice and action is visible. The materials we work with tell us something about ourselves. Materials that allow us to do what we envision help us feel successful and powerful, even if we get a little messy.
Reflection by Susan Missett-King and Char Halstead, Silver Room Co-Teachers
You must be logged in to post a comment.