Over the last few weeks, we have been forming relationships with adults and making new friendships. We are becoming more confident in exploring our environment and are beginning to get the hang of turn taking and sharing. We have been practising asking for help, inviting others to join our play, asking for a turn and also becoming increasingly independent when getting changed or looking after our belongings. Our grown ups are very proud of us!
We have also been getting creative; exploring ways to make marks, move to music, learning to use shapes and colour to create our own artwork. We have been learning all about an artist called Piet Mondrian. We know that he is from the Netherlands and liked using the primary colours – red, blue and yellow. Mondrian used lines to create shapes and colour blocked these shapes. His paintings are very colourful and many of us said we liked his work. Over this half term, we have tried different media and techniques to explore how Mondrian worked, taking inspiration to create our own compositions.
We have explored ink and rollers, masking tape to create lines that we then painted, used rulers to create 2D shapes such as squares and rectangles. Here are some photos of the processes we used and the final pieces we created. You can find out more about Mondrian here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr9h-y4oIpw
There are many creative people from history that we can learn from. This week we have read the story of a special person – Ella Fitzgerald. We listened to her story and then some of Ella’s music. We discussed what instruments we could hear and we loved how soothing her voice sounded. Many of us really enjoyed listening to jazz music and even tried to learn some of the song words! We will continue to explore different types of music over the next half term.
How you can help at home:
- Talk about Mondrian’s work – what do you like/dislike about it? What shapes can you spot?
- You might like to visit a museum or gallery and talk about what you like and have learned.
- Listen to some different types of music. How does it make you feel? Can you find ways to move to the music when it is fast/slow etc?
- Find out an interesting fact about a person of interest and share it with us on Tapestry.
- Create your own artwork inspired by Mondrian – think about the shapes and colours he used.