Thursday 26th April 2012

April weather. But always worth beginning a forest art session outside.  Today the children plunged into the task in their waterproofs, until fierce rain and the rumble of thunder propelled us inside to continue the session.

I'm running six weekly sessions with a Year 1 class; our topic is 'shape'.  The idea is to explore simple open ended tasks to reinforce and enhance the learning that goes on with the class teacher, whilst experiencing the freedom and adventure of working in larger, less structured spaces; essentially this is an art project so I feel justified in allowing the children to follow the tasks wherever they lead and am often surprised by the results.

This week we were thinking about squares.  After an initial discussion about squares, the children were given balls of wool and scissors and the task: make a square on the ground. Many of the children chose to work on a large scale immediately and they worked out how to make the sides the same length (some by measuring against the first side, others by eye).  Some of the children laid the wool straight down on to the grass and others found sticks to bang into the ground to create the points at the corners of the square first and then tied the sides to the corners.  They were then encouraged to use further pieces of wool to make lines, diagonal or straight inside the squares or to make other squares.  Some children also filled the squares with daisies or more wool.

When it started to pour with rain we went inside and, inspired by Lygia Pape's work cut up small squares made of double sided paper and arranged them on the wall in a grid.  Spending the first half of the lesson outside exploring squares meant the children came to the indoor task with vigour and extreme concentration.

Here is a link to a lovely short film of Adrian Searle talking about Pape's recent wonderful exhibition at the Serpentine.