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The Hollowed Log
November 16 Today we walked to the forest. One child offered us a question that inspired our forest visit: Where does charcoal live? The walk to the forest was especially exciting: the first snow of the season! The children are unusually aware of their surroundings because everything looks different with the snow.
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Lines & Charcoal
November 2 Lines—the children have noticed that charcoal easily makes lines. Perhaps it is the intensity of the lines charcoal makes that fascinates the children. Perhaps it is the power of lines themselves that keeps the children engaged? A few moments tell us that lines are not just marks on paper. It seems as if the lines have come alive for the children. A child shares a line with me tracing a thick charcoal mark on the paper that starts where he is and ends on my foot (about a metre away from him). I immediately pass the line back to the child who quickly marks another long, thick line…
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Tensions and Possibilities in Our Encounters with Charcoal
October 31, 2018 There was much enthusiasm about the possible interactions with paper and charcoal. Charcoal has been used by artists for a very long time, dating back to 15,000 BC. The children at St. John Early Learning Centre are invited to join these long artistic traditions within many cultures around the world. To set the scene and foreground the importance of charcoal as an art material, we placed large pieces of white paper on the floor and offered children thin willow charcoal sticks. In this initial exploration in the classroom, the children begin to understand some of the properties of charcoal. Charcoal is brittle, fragile, and easily breaks when…
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An Invitation to Slowing Down, Paying Attention and the Art of Noticing
October 30, 2018 We are inviting the children to engage in the arts of slowing down, paying attention, and noticing. Because the children and educators are interested in visiting and sharing stories about the nearby forest, we want to extend what happens in the forest into the classroom. For the past few months, we have been observing children’s engagement (even fascination) with sticks/branches/logs in the forest. To connect to children’s interests, we are inviting children to explore charcoal and paper. It matters deeply what materials we invite into our classroom. Paper and charcoal link us directly to forests—they start in forests… The sticks that children are fascinated with become charcoal…
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Charcoal proposals & invitations
A Walk in the Forest There was much enthusiasm about the possible interactions with paper and charcoal. Charcoal has been used by artists for a very long time, dating back to 15,000 BC. The children were invited to join these long artistic traditions within many cultures around the world. To set the scene and foreground the importance of charcoal as an art material, we placed large pieces of white paper on the floor and offered children thin willow charcoal sticks. In this initial exploration in the classroom, the children began to understand some of the properties of charcoal: “Charcoal is brittle, fragile and easily breaks when pushed on paper’s surface.…
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Charcoal
We are inviting the children to engage in the arts of slowing down, paying attention and noticing. Because the children and educators are interested in visiting and sharing stories about the nearby forest, we want to extend what happens in the the forest into the classroom. For the past few months, we have been observing children’s engagement (even fascination) with sticks/branches/logs in the forest. In order to connect to children’s interests, we are inviting children to explore charcoal and paper. It matters deeply what materials we invite into our classroom. Paper and charcoal link us directly to forests – they start in forests… The sticks that children are fascinated with…
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A Walk in the Forest with Educators
We (educators, pedagogists, researchers) took a walk in the forest with the intention to pay attention, notice, engage in the presence of more-than-human others. We asked ourselves…. What and how do we notice when I walk in the presence of others – including non-humans? What relations do we notice? What logics do we notice and how might we follow these logics? Our Engagements… We noticed life, death, playfulness, garbage and plastics, patterns and textures, sounds (wind, squirrels, sticks and leaves under our feet, a plane flying above us), human-made and organic structures, levels and heights, animals (frogs and insects), a wide variety of trees and plants, strength and resiliency. The…
