Early Years – The Unlimited Power of Aesthetic Education

The infant stage is the stage of the development of aesthetic education. In the process of appreciating works of art, it can not only give full play to children’s imagination, give them a broad space for unconstrained and free play, but also improve their language expression ability. Throughout the process, the teachers will encourage and guide children to boldly imagine, express their own opinions, speak freely, express their understanding and feelings while gaining information from their peers and enrich their inner feelings, so as to further review and reflect.

 

UOI- How we express ourselves

Have you heard of Loris Malaguzzi’s classic educational theory of ‘The hundred languages’? The theory that children have a hundred languages to express themselves gives us inspiration, and it became the primer for our exploration in this unit.

Now let’s start the journey of our exploration.

 

Station 1 

At the early stage of our exploration, we read a book named “The color monster” which helped children review colors and emotions we already learned before, and some children started to wonder that what will happen to colors in different states so we observed how colors will change in water and oil.

Children were doing experiment about color changing.

Mary dropped some food coloring into water.

Ethan dropped some food coloring into water mixing with oil.

Children found out that colors could blend with water in the first bowl, but it was difficult to blend in the second one.

 

Station 2 

We made some colorful ice cubes for more explorations later on.

Edison,Xining and Chloe were working together to create some big ice cubes.

Edison,Xining and Chloe were working together to create some big ice cubes.

Ice cubes were done.

 

Station 3 

Let’s see what we can do with these colorful ice cubes.

What will happen if we put there ice cubes into a plate of milk?
Let our children tell you!

Doyeon,Chloe,Mary and Edison were feeling the ice and milk with their hands saying “The ice is so cold!”

Neil,Yugeon and Roa were observing the color changing carefully. Neil said “I can see fish.”

 

Station 4 

We used a piece of gauze to replace milk, and children wondered what would happen. We held the gauze together shaking it up and down, but we need to keep those ice cubes on it and avoid falling down. During the process, children noticed the gauze changed color because of the ice cubes moving around on it.

Children’s conversation about ice cubes
Edison: They are swimming, they are swimming so fast, the waves are coming through.

Zhuzhu: They are dancing.

Chloe: Yes,they are so happy.

Rei: They are dancing.

Xining: The waves are coming.

Cindy: They are sailing on the waves！

 

Station 5 

We appreciated Picasso’s representative works “Guernica” and “Crying Woman”, as well as Van Gogh’s representative works “Sunflowers” and “Starry Sky”. Children felt different emotions from the works–happy, sad, angry, afraid. In the end, they voted for their favorite painting-”Starry Sky”, and after discussing, they decided to complete a starry sky painting collaboratively.

We chose three different loose parts as our “brushes” namely old toothbrushes, wine cork and cotton.

Xining and Mary were “brushing” with toothbrushes, and Ethan was “rolling” with a wine cork.

Rei,Chloe and Evan were working together.

Rei was “brushing” with a toothbrush, Chloe was “pointing” with a cotton ball, and Evan was “pointing” with a wine cork.

 

Station 6

Besides painting, we can also express ourselves through constructions, we used some paper tubes, paper cups and paper boxes to build up creative constructions. Firstly, children painted them into their favorite colors.

Ethan said “I like blue the best.” Cindy said “ Red is my favorite color.”

Siyuan said “I choose yellow and green because they are beautiful.” 

Neil said “I feel happy when I see blue.”
Secondly, children collectively cooperate to build the ideal little monster related with the book “The color monster” we read before. There is no fixed and unified standard for this step. Children can build according to their own ideas.

When children discuss and work together, they can always stimulate each other’s new ideas.

Zhuzhu said “This looks a castle lived by monsters.”

Xining said “It looks like a house.”

 

As teachers, we always encourage children to observe, think and reflect in many ways, so as to promote their development of divergent thinking. They have exerted their infinite imagination and creativity. Each work conveys different ideas and emotions. Some are about their whimsical ideas, some are about short stories they create, and some share their favorite things. No matter how it is presented, we should try to appreciate and experience it from their perspective.