Today we had a parent come in to do some art with our children. He is a keen amateur artist/photographer and has been wanting to come in and help us do something with the kids for a while now.
He has just returned from a trip to the North of Thailand where there was a ghost festival. He showed the children photographs of the masks that they wore and pictures that he had painted and line drawings, all of which were of a high standard.
It is how he started though that really caught my imagination. Considering he hadn’t worked with such young children before (Reception age) he did very well, keeping their interest and choosing tasks that were appropriate.
He started by asking the children if they wanted to see some magic? Of course they all wanted to and were instantly excited. He made the empty plate become full of M&Ms – just by opening the bag. Some of the children got the joke and thought it was funny and the rest just thought it was magic! He moved on to ask each of the children to choose one… this was the way in. After each child had a colour he asked one to come to the front. The child had to tell him what colour they had and what it reminded them of, then others with the same colour had to suggest other items / objects that were either that colour or they thought of when looking at that colour.
This really got the children thinking about colour and grabbed their imagination, we moved on to talk about portraits and things but I’ll certainly be trying this as an introduction next time I do an art lesson focused on colour.
