Written by Barkha Sharda
We had the first session for ‘Art Room’ today. The children were between 2 ½ and 4 years of age. Sheena narrated to the children the wonderful story of ‘Mr. Seahorse’ written by Eric Carle. We saw stone fish and leaf fish as we went through the sea with him and his family. As we went upstairs we talked about the sea and the fish in the sea.
Our first activity was the Rorschach test for introducing colours and form to the children. Although it is used for psychological testing by using ink and a sheet of paper, we used the activity differently. We used tube paints and butter paper to do the activity. We used four random colours and then made forms on them. After the picture had been blotted out, we put transparent plastic sheets on it to imprint the same on the sheet. In this process we felt that we were introducing colours, texture and the delight that comes from squishing and squashing to produce new colours, shades, and forms !
Our next activity was creating a scene from the sea. We painted the sea using different shades of green and blue. We first dabbed the whole sheet with water. After that we made running brush strokes with both blue and green and immediately held the paper straight for the colour to trickle down the moist sheet. This created patters of water on the sheet. Next, we finger painted a big fish cut-out. We used our finger tips and coloured the fish with various colours while the sea images were drying up. We stuck a fish and a whale on the sea pictures and populated the sea . We then hand painted a star fish similar to the other fish. After they dried we stuck the star fish with the other fish in the sea. We also had paper springs to which we had attached the big fish so it would pop out of the picture. We then made waves and fins for the fish with permanent markers.
The children thoroughly enjoyed the activities. They used different, innovative ways to colour the fish. They were quite fascinated with the pop-out fish at the end. It was a good first day at ‘Art Room’ for all of us.