Open ended Christmas Art

While I love doing projects with my kids that have an end in mind, projects that are suppose to create something specific I also truly believe in the value of exposing our children to open ended and child directed art forms. This philosophy aligns with aspects of The Reggio Emilia Approach. I used to be a preschool teacher in a Reggio school and I saw first hand the benefits of child directed/open ended art.

We do a ton of open ended art that goes un-blogged/un-documented simply because it's created in the moment and unplanned. This one however was planned and set up ahead of time.

I started with setting up a variety of Christmas themed materials. Bows, green and red paint, glitter, scissors and green and red tissue paper squares.

I placed the materials out for the girls to explore and experiment with. Again, I had no end product in mind. The idea was simply to allow them to use the materials however they wanted. 

They both immediately started painting. 

They experimented with mixing the colors red and green.

 My 4 year old was the first to add the glitter and use the tissue paper to stick on the paper.

 Jillian my 2 year old enjoyed cutting up the tissue into small pieces.

They both used all the materials and explored with different ways to add them to their art work. They were truly engaged and encouraged to take their time! All the while we had Christmas music playing while we made our creations next to the Christmas Tree! 

This is my 4 year olds final product! 

 This is my 2 year olds final product!

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Playroom Make Over Part 2

A few weeks ago I discussed making over our playroom.  If you missed the post check it out here: sensory-table-and-new-playroom.

Part of my inspiration for the new playroom came from The Reggio Emilia Approach.  One of many things this philosophy promotes is making items/toys accessible to children.  For me this meant purging and organizing.

One of the areas I focused on was our art corner. Previously all the materials were just thrown in bins and if the girls wanted to use them we had to sift through all the bins to find what we wanted.  There was really no rhyme or reason to it and some of the materials I even forgot we had.

Here is one wall of the new and improved art area.



The shelves were actually old cd shelves that were just sitting in our storage area completely unused. I had my hubby nail them to the wall and I organized all the material so that they could be seen by the girls and easy for them to take down and put back. Part of The Reggio philosophy is to have as many natural and real material as possible. We are still a work in progress but in the mason jars are rocks, shells, gems and wooden pieces for the girls to explore. The girls need to be supervised when using the mason jars, especially my 20 month old but they love exploring the materials in them.

Above the art shelves I placed some signs with questions. I use to have the signs in my pre-k classroom and often referred to them when guiding the children. Nothing ground breaking here but it reminds me to ask open ended questions while I am interacting with them during play. Sometimes I fall into being reactive with the girls play...answering their questions but not challenging them to think further. These questions among others not listed here really help with guiding them to think outside the box. "How might you make that tower bigger?", What did you do to make the color pink?", "Why do you think the puzzle piece doesn't fit there?", "What would happen if I added eggs to the flour?" etc.



After organizing the new playroom we also had fun decorating it! I bought some canvases at Michaels and had the girls paint them to hang on the walls in the playroom. They loved it and really enjoy seeing their work displayed.













The completed projects displayed.

Sensory Table and New Playroom

This will be the first of a few posts showcasing my new Reggio Emilia inspired playroom.

If you would like to learn more about the Reggio Emilia Approach check out this site: www.education.com/magazine/article/Reggio_Emilia/

While I would love to say we have a huge playroom with lots of natural light and big beautiful windows the reality is it's in a small space in our basement that's shared with our laundry area.  Since we moved here a year ago it has been a dumping grounds so to speak for all the toys we own in the house.  I didn't like going down there, it was cluttered and unorganized.  Using my own experience working in a Reggio Emilia school as well as inspiration from this site playathomemom3.blogspot.com I set out to transform the playroom into an inviting organized space for my girls.

This first thing I did was purge.  I went through all the toys that are broken, missing parts, "Junk" type toys and got rid of them.  I also filled a bag with good toys- some still in their packaging and set those aside for Good Will.

The philosophy behind the new playroom was to make it an inviting pretty environment.  If I felt the chaos being down there certainly my girls did too.  It's really about setting things up for purposeful play, providing as many natural materials for exploration, and most important (in my opinion) is to have items/toys accessible.

I took the girls down to the new playroom last night and the reaction was incredible.  They LOVED it down there, were incredibly engaged and we only scratched the surface with the new experiences I set up.

It's still a work in progress but I wanted to share a few things I've done so far.

The sensory table!  This is my homemade super cheap sensory table.  As you can see it's really just an old bin I had in our basement.  There are many items you could out in a sensory table but I started it off with colored sand, measuring cups, and some gems.  My 1 1/2 year old had to be closely monitored to make sure she didn't stick the sand or gems in her mouth, but she loved it just as much as Mallory.





Mallory played with it for at least a half hour!



I also used the girls tent to create a cozy reading area in the playroom.  They looked at books in there that had been down in the play area for the last year but were rarely looked at.





Again it was about presenting them in an accessible manner, "inviting baskets" and displaying them in a cozy place. Case in point, Mallory yelled with delight "I remember this book." and proceeded to sit down and read it. The book had been in the play area all along before the transformation but by presenting it in a different way she thought it had been lost and found again!



Here are some more ideas for sensory table items: styrofoam, shaving cream, snow, water, pine cones, shredded pieces of paper, sticks/twigs, leaves, uncooked noodles, bubbles, the list is endless!

Stay tuned for more playroom ideas!