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| time to add some colours to the spaghetti painting - the children had remembered seeing red and yellow flowers outside - so those were the colours made available... |
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| as before the most interest was in experiencing the spaghetti - lifting it up and letting it fall, squishing, stretching |
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| over and over again |
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| dipping the spaghetti in the paint and allowing it to dance across the paper was NOT today's story. The song the children were singing was sensory and experimental - testing the properties of the spaghetti. Making marks was not important. |
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| the summer spaghetti painting. I am now thinking along the lines of continuing this painting in autumn and using autumnal colours to continue the next layers... and then when winter comes to top it with winter colours - and if the paper can cope then spring colours on top of that... each time a photo of the process placed next to it so the children can see how the seasons change through the year by the different colours selected by their outdoor observations... |
Oh dear, I was very excited to see your blog and follow in my RSS reader. Unfortunately, after stumbling across this post I can't say I will be following anymore. I know that many people in several countries would find the fact that you use edible food for an art experiment completely offensive. I do. I don't understand with so many natural resources readily available (and in this case string?), with a number of people struggling to feed their families that this would be considered an appropriate activity for children. We should be teaching them about the value of food and resources. Each to their own, but I do hope you consider the next time you try these experiments in your classroom the number of starving families there are in this world, who would do anything for a bowl of spaghetti.
ReplyDeleteI totally understand where you are coming from... and have had this discussion several times over the years...
Deleteif the food is out of date and not fit for consumption then instead of just throwing it away it can be used for art...
yes string can be used, but it does not have the same sensory exploration.
The spaghetti in the above images was spaghetti that was going to be thrown away after lunch as it was not consumed and yet with all the coughs and sneezes was not something we are ALLOWED to save and instead of throwing it directly in the bin it got used for some fun first...
There are also MANY MANY people around the world that does not have access to clean water - many thousands that die from lack of water or lack of clean water...
does this mean we cannot have water play? Does this mean we should not use water in our art?
By using food occasionally as part of art and sensory play we can naturally take up the fact that not all children around the world have access to enough food and that there is starvation..
Many preschools use flour in play-dough - should we also stop using this - as this could provide bread? It is hard to find the balance when some foods are seen as OK in a learning environment while others are not...
As a preschool we do support 50 children in Nepal so that they are able to go to school and have a decent lunch there instead of trying to survive on the streets.
You are of course entitled to your own opinion... and to live a life of love and learning in ways that appropriate and feel right to you...
I am VERY conscious about what is going on in the world... I am VERY conscious about waste - and that there are HUGE amounts of food that are being thrown away every day...