Technology can be creative

People, Places, Things and Events:

Shapes/ crayons and an Iron can be Fun

5/4/11

Both Piaget and Vygotsky believed that play was an essential component of development. Children do not make the distinction between play and work or if you like learning, therefore we have to believe that play is a rich and varied medium for learning (Berson & Berson, 2010).   We can incorporate technology into activities that children enjoy such as the art experience that I am going to write about.

To continue with our focus on shapes in the environment we took the children for a walk through a park near to our centre. We wanted to see how many different shapes we could collect from the beginnings of the autumn fall and compare them to shapes that we were familiar with. We gathered baskets, bags and put on our high visibility jackets and off  we went on a leaf hunt down into the trees.  This activity was about exploring, developing and representing learning experiences to help the children to make sense of the world (Berson & Berson, 2010).

Some of the children used my camera to take pictures of leaves as we walked and enjoyed being in control of the camera. I had some scary moments especially when one little boy darted quickly to a stream with my camera in hand!! There were many different shaped leaves, some looked like hearts others like ovals. After gathering enough leaves we set off home and compared them to the photos of shapes that we had seen during another walk into the community such as on road signs, letter boxes and buildings. We then talked about how we could use them in a creative way.  We came up with lots of ideas and decided that we would concentrate on two; the first was the children used crayon rubbings to making leaf prints, making exciting patterns and shapes. Do you think of paper and crayons as technology?

 The second was to create art using Iron Technology. We placed our leaves onto wax paper shiny side up then grated crayon over the paper. The children chose their own colours as they did the leaves, we then placed another piece of wax paper on top of the leaves and grated crayon shiny side down. We then gently on a low heat ironed our pictures!! The children had such fun and enjoyed the many processes that took place to produce the end product. We had to talk about safety when using an electrical appliance and how we needed to keep our fingers away from the hot part of an Iron.

Art activities are a wonderful way to introduce new technology concepts and ideas such as the grater for grating,wax paper, crayons and Iron. It also provided an opportunity for me and other teachers to support and scaffold the children’s learning. This supports an environment where children learn strategies for active exploration and develop working theories for mak

ing sense of the natural, physical and material worlds (Ministry of Education, 1996, p88).

I believe that it is important to foster children’s imaginations and encourage their curiosity and awareness about their surrounding environments. Smorti (1999) suggests that it is important that we continue to broaden our own understanding of technology by extending our own knowledge and skill base so that we can meet the needs of our children.

 I think that it is important to stop and reflect on the challenges we face as teachers, to explore and encourage new technology experiences for our children. Sometimes our daily routines are so busy we forget to take time to stop and think would you agree?



The finished Product

 

Berson.I., & Berson,M. (2010). High Tech Tots. Childhood in a Digital World. America:   Information 

        Age Publishing. 

Ministry of Education. (1996) Te Whāriki: He Whāriki mātauranga mo nga mokopuna o   Aotearoa. Wellington: Learning Media

Smorti, S. (1999) Technology in Early Childhood. Early Education, No. 19  Autumn 1999.