“A child’s drawing is not just a representation, but a window into their thoughts and their world. In drawing a portrait, they do not merely copy what they see, but express their understanding, their relationships, and their vision of the world”, Reggio Emilia.

With dad’s night coming up this week, we decided to offer everyone the opportunity to draw a representation of their daddy to display on the wall. At mat time Kaiako Sarah asked the children what body parts we have and drew them on the board adding the number of body parts and using positional language.  This process of scaffolding supports children’s understanding so that they could use this knowledge to draw their dad after morning tea time.

“Through art and creativity, children explore and express their ideas, their world, and themselves. Drawing a portrait allows children to make connections between who they are, who others are, and how they relate to the world around them.”  Te Whāraki.

Just like we had done for our father’s event we offered the tamariki to opportunity to draw a representation of their Mum’s for our mothers day morning tea.

Scaffolding this learning experience we together as a group shared ideas of what we needed to remember when drawing a portrait of our mummy’s. As they shared their ideas I drew them up on the board.  I made mistakes like drawing circles too small or disconnected to create more discussion and thoughts about size and position. This opened up new ideas from drawing our dad’s like a neck to connect the head to the body.

When everyone was happy that we had remembered everything we went to the table to draw.

We combined this recent skill with our literacy learning. After exploring the letter ‘c’ and the phonic (sound) it makes we discussed all the body parts and features a cat might have and where they are positioned on the body. These fabulous master pieces were created.

Ka rawe tamariki mahi toi.