Space- the final frontier before Christmas.

Well only one more week to go until the school starts to do Christmas as a whole school topic.  Meanwhile my lessons are - making aliens using a paint blob on a piece of folded up paper  and making play dough with the class - to make aliens also.This last activity is a sensory activity - but how does one split art and sensory activities??

For example - I looked at the timetable under sensory activities for the next two weeks - the activites are - making craters in the sand , playdough aliens orange pomanders decorating Christmas logs. These activities might also be classified as Art activities - maybe in a nursery class.. This is a special school timetable and sensory activites are  very much part of the children's development. 

 I am looking for the hidden art activities in the curriculum because if we can identify the use and importance of art and its benefits to the development of children - then maybe art will begin to be seen as a very important skill throughout a child's school life.When I chose art as a subject at school my peers would say art is a useless subject. However over the years I realise that my love of art has been a vehicle for plenty of cross culture learning for me.This has helped me to become a more confident person.Although I still fight against the silly voices in my head telling me negative thoughts about my art - I move forward happier and more at peace with myself as I look for beauty in life..and try to capture this in my art.

Last week we managed to produce plenty of space ships. I had a feeling to buy extra strong tin foil - which was to be used to cover the top of the flying saucer. The children really enjoyed  crunching up the tinfoil and we made space rocks from it as well as using it to cover the flying saucer.I stapled two paper plates together and left the base plain to be decorated with glitter glue. The children were encouraged to squeeze the glue out of the tube - thus encouraging muscle strength. Some of the children are visually impaired and so it is important to have bright art materials to use. Others are hearing impaired and so the act of scrunching up or squeezing out or finger painting is an important part of their sensory/creative development.

I had rocket templates which were also decorated with glitter glue. The children also painted sun and stars using a mixture of medium. The result was a great display wall covered in space ships, flying saucers moons stars and space rocks. We also put up the learning outcome on the wall. I will ask if I can photograph this display.

That reminds me - I wanted a small compact camera to take with me on my walks in the environment. We have two big cameras which are difficult and awkward to carry. Thank goodness the other Sony Cybershot with 10.1 megapix turned up and is now charged up. It fits into my pocket and is very good. As I was walking about at the weekend - inspiration struck me again.. The skies are so beautiful and so is the vegetation the idea of me making images of the earth and sky could be the next project. The work in progress just now is exciting and today I did some more on the theme of rubbish found in my environment. Well now is a good time to take a picture and post it on this blog. Wish me luck...

Success!Thanks to my computer literate husband I now have them downloaded and am pleased with the results of the small camera. In fact the camera's viewfinder has actually helped me to frame the parts I like best.I am just using all the media I have to hand just now am mixing oil paint with acrylic paint and charcoal and using blank spaces too. Its all good fun!