VISUAL ARTS
VISUAL ARTS PORTFOLIO
This Visual Arts Portfolio shows my increased knowledge and skills I required in teaching Visual Arts to children up to five-years-old. It includes the ECE241 assignment with some annotations of my teaching approach.
Response 1.
To make effective videos, it is necessary to have all resources available
before I start. These resources should also be of the proper quality.
It is also better if I put together a brief script of what I will be saying or
the video.
This approach improved my line drawing skills and creative thinking in how
I could make it interesting for the children. I decided to create the
letter A on the front page which shows up clearly when the back
page is in place.
On reflecting on the Arts comprehensive course content, the on-line study
videos were a great help in understanding the Arts.
I certainly felt appreciative of knowing and practicing the Arts and how this
is related to children’s development and
supporting learning of other subjects in the curriculum.
There is no doubt that Art is an essential part of children’s development and
without it, the other subjects will be disadvantaged in trying to
provide a complete education for the children.
Since the website development was the first time for me, I did rely on study
and some tutoring to create the video and the website.
This was a fast-learning curve, but I feel it did increase my overall creativity
and computer internet and art skills.
Response 2
In early childhood education the teachers’ Arts skills play an important part in
the overall intellectual development of children from an early age.
Every child has an inherent Arts related skill which must be nurtured and
developed otherwise they will not progress at an acceptable pace
or achieve the required educational standard in the other curriculum
subjects.
Arts skills at an early age challenges children to expand their thinking in a
creative way which helps greatly in understanding other leaning
experiences.
How the children are taught is another aspect which has been changing since
Vygotsky’s theories about sociocultural learning was published. He
suggests that “children’s artistic abilities can be enhanced through
interaction with others”.
This is the opposite of what had been happening with the teacher using a
hands-off approach leaving the children to develop art on their own.
Without the teacher’s guidance and nurturing it is likely that the outcomes
would not meet the educational objectives.
The Arts curriculum must include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders cultural
aspects with dreamtime stories, dot painting, symbols, and patterns to
ensure all children appreciate their unique art.
For the non-Indigenous children this brings an opportunity to gain experience
about Australian history and the traditional owners of the land. For
both cultures, the learning of Indigenous Arts can only lead to
children’s enjoyment and achievement particularly when their work is
displayed and viewed by teachers and parents.
In teaching visual arts, it provides support to other early learning subjects since
it promotes effective communication, interaction, motor skills and
thought processing during the early years.
Overall, visual arts education contributes to the children’s growth, skills, and
abilities in many areas to prepare them for the next major step in
going to primary school.
LEARNING EXPERIENCE PLAN
Introduction to line drawing
From my analysis of the children that I collected, some already like to do drawing and
others, usually boys like doing outdoor activities such as pushing enormous
toy trucks up and down which make lines in the sand.
I am planning to introduce simple line drawings, because of my interest in the
educational program goal of The Bush Kinder of The Farmhouse and bring the
children into learning basic arts skills.
This drawing is based on Creative Art 2, Visual Art where children will be able to learn
how to start creating and drawing a simple line by the end of the teaching
experience. This is an essential element for the next step of creating shapes
such as alphabet letters or achieving other literacy skills before they are going
to school.
The Early years learning outcome will be aimed at developing their Arts knowledge and
giving them a keen sense of identity. For learning outcome number 4, Children
are confident and involved learners. They would develop a sound process of
problem solving. For example, they will have an eagerness to learn the
alphabet when the teacher is showing and spelling their nametag when calling
them for morning tea or lunch. Other learning outcome hopefully children
would reach learning outcomes number 5.
Children are effective communicators; Children begin to understand symbols and
patterns.
This is achieved with children of the age of four to five when they have already mastered their basic speaking.
Plan
This learning experience will take place on the blackboard wall area of the BushKinder
in the Farmhouse. This blackboard is located on the veranda behind the wall for
hanging their bags. It is a secluded area close to a big tree which is in the
Bush Kinder’s outdoor nature area. I have already wrapped the tree in pink
satin fabric to make it more pleasant. For fun, I call the tree Anita the Educator.
Materials and /or Resources:
1.Mat and some cushions.2. Some colorful chalks.3. One of the child’s bags, just for showing a vertical and a horizontal example. 4. One of the children’s lunch boxes .5. One of the children’s drink bottles. 6. A rule for a sample vertical or horizontal line. 7. Two papers for me. 8. Two Colorful texts for me, green and brown.9. Some papers for children. 10. Some texters for children. 11. Some colorful crayons. 12. A board for attaching paper. 13. Some dry wood stick from trees of surrounding area. 14. A big dump truck that they always play with.
Vocabularies:
Simple shapes, toys, letters and words, name, swirls, thin, thick.3
This is what I am going to say, to get the children’s attention:
I want to draw a line, starting with a dot. If we draw it to the right, we call ithorizontal
and if we draw it up and down, we call it vertical. I will then introduce some
names of various kinds of lines such as thin, thick, wavy, zigzag and curve. I
will make this fun for them by singing along with the drawing actions.
Engagement:
Starting early in the morning when they arrive, I will tell them my plan for a drawing
activity outside at the blackboard area at the mat near the big tree that I
covered with pink fabric. I will call them when the time comes by making a
noise using a thick stick, this means it is gathering time. To make it pleasant, I
will call them together by singing so the small group will come together quickly.
At the location, I will say, Bush Kinders, today I want to teach you how to draw a simple
line, I will take a ruler, and I will make a line on paper then I will also draw a
line of length of the dump truck toy, and a bag line, and a line of lunch box.
Then when I want to talk about vertical lines, I will take a ruler, but I draw a
line vertically, and I will say down. I could say in repetition like down, down,
down, and drawing it that way. When I say horizontal, I might use the word
right and with repetition. For their imagination I will draw them a tree and a
gate.
Closure:
I will conclude by reminding them that we must start from a dot, then repeat the above
instructions so that they fully understand the concept of horizontal andvertical lines.
Also, I will show them thick, thin, long, and short lines. Different strategies: I will show
a sample of interesting lines drawn on paper of several types and colours e.g.,
thick, thin, zigzag, wavy, together with their names to make atop horizontal
paper. I will repeat this for a vertical paper.
When this is complete, I will cut the top horizontal line paper, so it turns into a frame
shape for the bottom vertical line paper. There are many other variations that I
can try to make the process more interesting for children’s learning.