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Step By Step Mia

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Children have returned to BestStart Roydvale and are straight back into expressing their interests while teachers are guiding inspiring learning experiences. Below we have shared an example from Mia's learning journey. 

It is so exciting to see you back at preschool Mia. You seemed to have had the time of your life here so far at BestStart Roydvale, with your friend Zach.  Throughout your time at home I knew that your passion for creativity and art was continuing, as we would often see you busy creating when you joined us for zoom meetings. Before the centre closed for a little while, you had also been regularly making creative artworks for your friends and teachers. As you returned to the centre, we ensured that there was a continuous supply of items for you to be creative with including paper, paint, felts and pens.  As well as stickers, glue and cellotape. Using these items you freely created all kinds of pictures and frequently revisited painting hand prints.

Yesterday we decided to use your love of art and think about 'Mothers Day' that was coming up. We used Google to find some inspiration.  Mia, you told me that you wanted to make a unicorn.  After scrolling through images of all kinds of craft you settled on your favourite image, which we printed out to have a better look at. To engage in the most learning possible with this experience, I encouraged you to make a plan about how you were going to re create the image you found. To do this we looked at what resources we might need (you decided paper, scissors, cellotape and pencils).  Then you had a think about the process or steps we would take.

When looking at the image of the unicorn we noticed that the main shape was a love heart. You set out to draw and cut out your shape before moving onto the hair. For this you cut small sections of paper to resemble hair, before colouring them and taping them to the love heart. Next was the ear and then the flowers - we found some flowers in the preschool.

Through this experience Mia, you have been learning all about different processes you can use to create your own artwork. We love that you freely create you art, yet sometimes it is also nice to have a look at all the different kinds of things that are possible (hence the Google images for provocation). For someone like you Mia who is already so creative, this was an opportunity to practice some strategic thinking, formulate a plan for how to approach a task and then follow through with that plan, making adjustments when necessary. The next time you set out to create an image, you may remember this experience and have another go at using similar techniques, or remember how we dissecting the original image into shapes that we recognised.

We also had a lot of fun experimenting with paintbrushes on string, we quickly discovered the string moved in a completely different way to when we hold the brush in our hand. Take a look at the video above.

Whanau also have the opportunity to respond, ask questions, give feedback on storypark where the children's stories are posted.

Mia's family responded saying: 

How awesome to see the pride and effort you put in in making mummy a gift for mother’s day! A+ for being helpful and sharing with Zach! Mia has been buzzing since her return daycare during the Level 3 and mum so appreciates the care and learnings from you all, the extra attention and keeping safe during the pandemic is truely amazing Thank you