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Beaverbrook Art Gallery

Today we took the children to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery for a tour of the gallery and to see an exhibit of art work created by children from around the province. We also participated in an art activity after we were finished the tour. There were two different activities that the children did. One was drawing with chalk pastel on black construction paper and the other was creating mosaic by gluing bits of coloured paper onto another sheet of paper.

Observations:

The children seemed to enjoy the trip and the art activities. They liked the chalk pastel drawings in parciular. I noticed that some children, who typically didn't spend very much time at my art table, when it was their turn, seemed to really enjoy working with the pastels. I decided that I would introduce mixed media and have the children choose which media they wanted to use.

I found that the pastel was much more successful than the mosaic. I believe that the mosaic may not have been developmentally appropriate for them or they simply had no experience with making mosaics prior to this thus they had little knowledge of how to work within this medium. A significant number of children are not yet representing something when they draw or paint so representing something using only bits of paper and glue seemed challenging.

The woman running the activity showed the children an example of a mosaic that a little girl in grade one made depicting a camping trip that she had gone on with her family. Not one of the children from the classroom created anything that was representational on their mosaic. Most of them simply glued the pieces of paper on their page with what at times appeared to be little rhyme or reason (at least none that was expressed). After the two groups switched activities, I noticed one of the children who had just moved to the pastel table was drawing a mosaic picture almost identical to the one that the girl in grade one had drawn about her camping trip. This incident confirmed my suspicion that lack of experience was the likely cause of their inability to represent anything in particular in their pictures.

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