Princeville Art Week – day 2
For day two, stone feathers, the age jumped to year four children. Rather than follow the story with purely a making exercise, I buried piles of the coloured stones around the Forest School.
The children were very excited, charging around identifying the treasure piles and counting them. Next they were given trowels and containers to dig up enough to make their peacock feathers. The stones were covered in mud and needed to be washed, sieved, sorted and dried before they could be used.
The children made use of water from the rain barrel, taking buckets of the water or collecting it as it ran along the wooden gutters along the side of the Forest School. Again, as with the Nursery children, there was ample opportunity for free plan and investigation. This lead to children completing the various tasks at different times and allowed the session to take on its own rhythm and pace.
The dry stones were glued onto cookies which the children had drilled themselves then sticks were chosen and thinned by the children using potato peelers.
Some children chose to copy the design of the example piece while others chose their own patterns.