What skills and tools could help us further our shadow exploration?

As I pondered directions to go for our shadow work, I had the idea to have children begin drawing shadows. Many things I love about drawing:

- it helps us examine things with more detail
- it helps us clarify our ideas, creating something concrete and tangible from thoughts that may be a little more nebulous in our heads
- it helps us convey our ideas to others
- it helps us revisit our ideas, inspect them and revise them as necessary

I wanted to see where the children were at, in regards to representational drawing. I offered small groups of children a piece of white paper and I sharpened pencils with them so they could work and rework their drawing if they wanted to. I also set out a few objects on the table if they wanted to use them for inspiration. This is what I noticed:





Though I was interested in their representational drawing skills, I noticed, first, how their grips on the pencil were different. Different grips help and hinder different techniques. They make us use different muscles that affect how much pressure we use, the angle of the pencil, as well as the control and precision of our marks.

I decided to take a step back and look at how we could nurture each of the children's skills, where they were at. What is it about the environment that I can change? What is it about the activity that I can change that would make it more developmentally appropriate? How might these changes help the children to be more successful?

When I think about the basics of drawing (and writing, for that matter), all they really consist of are straight and curved lines. We set out to find straight lines in our environment, tracing our fingers over the line, and then worked on creating straight lines on paper.















The children didn't seem to have much difficulty finding lines in the environment. However, I noticed that there weren't as many "stand alone" curved lines in the environment. They were mainly part of an object (ex. the side of a leaf). It makes me wonder if they would have such an easy time finding curved lines. Another thing that I noticed was that Jason used a different grip when using a pencil and when using a crayon. In reflecting on what I've observed in these two provocations, I think about new questions to move us forward.

What writing/drawing tools can I offer to encourage more precision in their marks? How can we work on looking closer at objects and breaking them down into manageable parts?

As I was talking to Melanie (Damon's mom), she mentioned that some of the basics of drawing start with negative spaces. I don't have all the answers and expertise, but I love that in a community, we are all equipped with different skills, knowledge and expertise that we can draw from!