Aim 2

The aim is to make the activities in the small group section more creative in art. (Open ended).

Rationale
During the focus activities, I encouraged art activities that supported the children to be creative and to use their imagination in their work. However, I need to plan activities that are open ended, so the children can be more creative. This is because I used to give them instructions about how to do the activity and it is not always necessary because they have less attention span than we have and also they will not be able to remember all the instructions.  In addition, the children do not always need instructions if the nature of the activity is clear to them.


Strategies

• Give them long pieces of string and allow them to choose how long they want the string to be and what they want to make. Then give them many different types of beads such as acrylic beads, wooden beads, shaped beads and letter beads. They may choose to create a bracelet or necklace.

• Set out a variety of painting materials and encourage children to use them to create any type of art work they wish but within the theme or topic. Items to include with painting include paper, water colors, finger paint, different sized paint brushes and other items that children can use.

• offer the children a choice – e.g. draw one of the characters from the book.

• Provide children with a variety of arts and crafts materials and encourage them to use the materials to create any type of artwork they wish. Items to consider offering children include craft foam. Lace doilies, cotton balls, colored sand and glitter. Invite children to explore the different materials and glue them onto paper to create 3-D pieces of art. I may have to provide examples or pictures of possible things they can create at first.

• Give them a choice of possible activities.

• Emphasize that I won’t always give detailed instructions and that sometimes they should think for themselves what they should do.

 
Children's pictures

Mentor observation

 

Self evaluation

Week 1:

o Lamb Paper Plate Craft is an open ended activity where the children had the chance to understand the structures of the activity by them selves  because the activity was clear enough for them to understand.

o Lollipop art activity helped the children to be creative and to understand the structure of the activity. Moreover, the children had the chance to choose when to finish the activity.

 Week 2:

o Letter F for Frog printable activity encouraged the children to use their creativity skills as well as having the decision of when to finish the activity.

o Flower art craft gave the children the chance to know the way of doing the activity and how they decorate it.

Week 3:

o Create and decorate a jellyfish. This activity helped the children to be creative and also to guess the structures of the activity. However, the had a little support from the teacher.

o Decorate a printable jet. The children in this activity also were creative because some of them used glitter to decorate it and some of them colored their printable.

o Long, Medium and short hair activity for numeracy lesson. I provided yarn in different colors and lengths and printable faces. After that I encouraged the children to glue the yarn as hair on each face outline according to the length. The children were able to know the structures and where to glue each piece of yarn.

Week 4:

o I asked the children to draw the story that I read it with them which was open ended activity and they were able to draw whatever they want from the story and to stop drawing whenever they would like.

o With the goat mask activity, I just told them that I need them to make a mask. They knew what they have to do and how and also what materials they can use to decorate their masks.