This month in the Explorers Room, our tamariki have been engaging in rich learning through collage art.
As part of our curriculum review, we identified collage as an area to extend further, with strong links to creativity and sensory exploration.
Recently, the children have been experimenting with a variety of materials such as buttons, pipe cleaners, and paint on card. Collage offers our under-twos opportunities to explore texture, colour, and shape, while also supporting the development of fine motor skills.
Actions such as painting glue, pressing buttons into place, or twisting pipe cleaners help strengthen the coordination required for other areas of learning such as doing puzzles, drawing, and writing. For many of our explorers, this experience has been as much about curiosity and discovery as it has about creativity.
Some children were intrigued by the feel of the pipe cleaners, while others enjoyed the challenge of making objects stick and stay in place. The addition of paint provided another layer of sensory exploration, with colours blending together to create unique outcomes.
For this particular activity, we focused more on the process and the experience rather than the end product, encouraging tamariki to explore freely. In the Explorers, we value open-ended creativity and the opportunities it provides for tamariki to express themselves with confidence.
We look forward to continuing our collage journey and seeing how their ideas and independence develop in the weeks ahead.