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Simon Nicholson loose parts

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How to arrange materials to support children’s learning

Children’s play with sensory-rich, loose part materials can be an important part in creative learning. How these materials are spatially arranged may also dramatically influence how a child takes up and explores them. Below are three practical tips for arranging materials to support children’s imagination and curiosity. I have put these together based on my own experience working as an artist and educator with young children. It would be great to hear what others find useful when laying out materials for children so please comment below! Layout materials to encourage social interactions Vygotsky talks about the importance of social interactions in facilitating learning amongst groups of people (Vygotsky, 1980). As a child’s peers, teacher or parents may have more advanced understandings or abilities in relation to a particular skill, concept or task, a child’s interactions with them may allow for new knowledge to be produced. Social interactions between groups of people may…

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Learning

The Nature of Play book review

In our busy and digital-driven world, many children have little opportunity to engage in everyday play in nature. Recent research has also illustrated that technology is significantly affecting how children think and focus their attention, with some screen-based games significantly restricting the use of imagination and creativity. The Nature of Play: A Handbook of Nature-Based Activities for all Seasons offers a remedy to this dilemma. The book features 44 play activities for children and adults in gardens, forests and city parks throughout the four seasons. For example, the Spring section of the book features activities such as ‘Get to know a tree’ and ‘plan a picnic.’ The Winter section then offers more indoor play prompts such as ‘build your own marble run’ and ‘rainy day games.’ Other activities include: Make your own pinhole camera using a recycled Pringles tubeCreative a beautiful seasonal mobile using objects collected from nature Construct a sand volcano…

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Amazing artists and educators

Children’s creative learning through the art of Daiga Grantina

childrens creative learning art education atelier daiga grantina palais de tokyo loose parts

This post looks at Daiga Grantina’s installation ‘Toll,’ to consider how the sculpture could be used to design a children’s material-play environment. I am still recovering from the awesomeness of all the modern and contemporary art I encountered on my recent trip to Paris. A highlight was seeing Daiga Grantina’s gigantic, multi-media sculpture, ‘Toll’ at the Palais de Tokyo. In this post, I take a closer look at Daigna’s experimentation with materials in the installation. I then consider how this could be used as a starting point for children’s creative learning. This post is part of a four-part series looking at artist’s innovative ways of working with materials and how this can be used to support children’s creativity. The first two posts looked at the art of French sculptor, César Baldaccini and American textile artist, Sheila Hicks. Check them out if you have not already! Daiga Grantina is a Latvian-born…

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