Mark Making Matters
We have been giving children rich opportunities to explore making marks.
Our Promise is “I can use marks to communicate meaning”.
Our RESEARCH QUESTION is helping us reflect on how our encouraging emotional environment is supporting children to express themselves, tell stories about themselves, express their identity – through the marks they make.
And children have been drawing around themselves, around their bodies!
Perhaps saying “This is me!”
It’s so connected to the CRUCIAL C’s!
We often describe our emotional worlds and sense of belonging here at St. Paul’s through the Crucial Cs.
I CONNECT – I believe I belong.
I am CAPABLE – I believe I can do it.
I COUNT – I believe I matter.
I have COURAGE – I believe I can handle what comes.
Perhaps the experimentation in mark making – from different perspectives and scales – on the floor, at height, around each other, drawing BIG – has supported children to develop their strong sense of self, well-being and belonging.
Perhaps saying, “This is me!”
STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths!
Children’s learning is so Holistic – they are engaging with the world with all their powers of learning…
Children are scientists!
Children are engineers!
Children are mathematicians!
We want to give them well organised and well-structured tools.
Our Curriculum describes children using mathematical reasoning to solve problems, applying their understanding of shape, space and measure, seeing patterns and connections.
Our Promise is “I use all my senses to engage in scientific enquiry”.
And here in Early Years 2, we have been helping children return to some interesting tools, shapes, ideas again and again and again.
We love the Magnetic Tile Shapes.
Children can recognise shapes – their names, their properties.
They can manipulate them – rotate them, fix them together, compose and decompose shapes, create symmetries and patterns, make large 3D models.
We provided the children with “tea lights” alongside the Magnetic Tile Shapes… to see what would happen!
“There’s always another question… another idea… to find out about!”
Clay Play!
Rhea is our new Resident Artist.
And is passionate about creativity!
And passionate about Clay!
The slippy, sloppy, squelchy kind!
Children have been chopping, patting, squeezing, rolling, hammering, scraping, poking, cutting.
Rhea has been supporting children to explore, design, make, create with clay.
She has been helping children use tools to cut, carve and shape.
Rhea has been helping children explore the endless possibilities of clay!
Connecting Worlds!
Our Promise is “I connect with the wider world”
There is a “saying” we have here at St. Paul’s that “the Curriculum is outside the window and inside the child” and we have been making shops here in Early Years 2 then going shopping out on Grovesnor Road.
We have been helping children make links in their learning, between experiences.
We have been shopping.
We have been cooking.
We have been pretending!
Complex, imaginary play is at the heart of our Creative Curriculum.
Children have been pretending to be shopkeepers and shoppers.
Children have been writing lists, playfully collaborating and pretending, imagining and reimagining roles and responsibilities.
And we went shopping… with out shopping list, our shopping bag, our money… to buy ingredients for Pizza…
… which we then cooked on the fire outside!
YUM!
Brrrrrr! It’s Cold! Let’s Light a Fire!
Come and sit by our fire… you are more than welcome… you can warm up!
We have been coming together around our fire… to sing, to cook, to warm up, to be together.
Have you seen the flames… glittering bright!
Have you heard the POP of the wood – crackle and spit!
Have you smelt the smoke – whispers in the sky!
Come and sit by our fire… you are more than welcome… you can warm up there!
