Graphic traces of children in town

1. Themes

1.1. Dragon... Dragons

1.2. The staircase of desires

1.3. Drawing movement

1.4. Driving trucks and vans is difficult

1.5. Discomposed chairs

1.6. People come.... People go

2. Introductions of projects... Cildren's drawing and mark making.

2.1. Cultural project as well as educational project run last September 2011

2.2. Putting this work out into the town so it involves and is part of the whole community

2.3. Three ideas, drawing, mark and design (grafice, desegno, segno)

2.4. Relatively short timescale

2.5. Explore the children's language of graphics in black and white.

2.6. Deliberately not showing off but trying to build a relationship between school and city that relates directly the the work down the centres everyday.

2.7. But this was stil seen as just another step inthe wider project that has lasted for 50 years

2.8. Schools chose a place in the old town and started a series of visits. They began workin ton ideas (signs and drawings) in relation to this space.

2.9. Key words about graphics and racing -a language all children posses, familiar to all, takes many forms, an essential language, and expressive,

2.10. Graphics is a unifying language, everyone can use it but it is not a language that can be certainly interpreted.

2.11. Video of 1yr old girl:

3. Gulliver pre-school

3.1. Drawing is a natural and pleasurable way for children to work, it is a way to think about things, order ideas, relaxing

3.2. Sometimes children specialise in certaiapproaches, these are ways of researching those process which work for them and which don't

3.3. Quality of materials and contexts that adults offer children is very important and needs careful consideration

3.4. Reflection on what materials teachers offer shows that they are often rather similar and predictable. Do we have to drawin paper, with pens or pencils?

3.5. Key point: in this project, the teachers spent a great deal of time looking at what happens when you draw on different materials and surfaces, and here's the difference, the teachers explore and understand and deconstruct their own understanding and open their own minds before putting things in front of the children

3.6. Looked at all different type sof material that could take marks and all different things that could make marks.

3.7. Hesse initial investigations were like controlled experiments, first, white paper and explore the mark makers then swap...

3.8. Here, the narrative element when the kids explored was reduced to the minimum, instead they explored the materials and all the difference things that could be done with each type.

3.9. As the children experimented with materials and mark makers they and the teachers were open to possibilities, and things that had happened unintentionally.

4. Points of view, scuola municipale at the Loris Malaguzzi Centre, adults, 8 yr old sand 5 year olds involved.

4.1. Documentation and making documents is a long and shared process that represents the views of diverse participants.

4.2. Into retain of the title multidimensional reality, subjectivity and time

4.3. Drawing is thinking, it generates traces that follow us through reality and record sour thoughts about our reality.

4.4. Example taken in a forest... A world in itself and a metaphor for the first ideaofmultidimensional reality, all the trees look the same but are different for eg.

4.5. The trees also provide subjects that can stand incredible attention to detail. Form, texture, colour and so ontim

4.6. Time to observes essential

4.7. Here, complexity is embraced. Different points of view (differences at the same time)' changes through time and level of detail.

4.8. Studies of wood, looking at old wood, who'd under the microscope, and drawing what you see, the drawing helps you record but also understand what you can see (or at least make sense of it).

4.9. R these reasons, they chose to explore natural spaces and the teachers did their investigations first - considering what the children might do.

4.10. Children draw maps, textures, from memory, they consider point of view and perspective to study what things look like from different pov

4.11. The children visited the Chinese supermarket and bought'question objects' things they weren't sure about they brought them back and thought about them. They used the objects to make a composition. And then they drew the composition

4.12. They considered rearrangements, different lighting and pov. Initially the children kept most objects in their compositions but as they worked through the materials they reduced the number of objects they wanted to study in detail.

4.13. Some noticed the shadows of objects which prompted investigations into sources and intensities of light and how that changed the children's understanding of the objects. This led to attempts to use shade and tome almost unprompted.

4.14. Again, time for reflection through discussion of products from the drawing experiments in small groups.

4.15. The follow up to these reflections is the creation of a new composition to see what learning is applied to the new context and what the next steps are...

5. Follow-upto 'Materials that support drawing'

5.1. Looking at documentation.

5.2. One of the outcomes from the materials work changed the ways the children responded, often in a much less child-like way.

5.3. A thought that would frighten UK teachers... A story about a girl who drew a frog for a whole year over and over. Her work descended into a scribble for a while and then evolved into a picture of her mother, and for another year she drew pictures of her other.... An amazing picture, but for a whole year!

5.4. Taking. Items, making documentation, two members of staff at the same time notice very different things and aspects of learning.

5.5. Being an atelierista is not a series of responsibilities but ANN attitude, to look, and to go back and to look again.

6. Discomposed chairs, , scuola communale Robinson

6.1. A project about being at the table together.

6.2. This projects evolves fron ongoing project in school and so they picked a restraint in town to workin.

6.3. Having visited the restraint the children decided to take with them a particular object... A chair!

6.4. The idea of a discomposed chair comes from the children expressingthe idea that they get bored sitting in a chair waiting in a restraint. - not sitting still, that's for sure!

6.5. They thought about the use of available materials in thepizzaria, exploring what can be done to and with a napkin, for instance.

6.6. They created/imagined seats that transformed (drawing over photocopies of photos of the chair they had brought back with them.)

6.7. 5 yr olds, discomposed chairs, explored lots of ways of not sitting properly on a chair... Lovely series of photos of children trying/testing how many different ways they could not sit on the chair!

6.8. As they tested different ideas, working as a group was important becuase the children helped one another focus on and stretch it hire. Ideas.

6.9. What is the adults role? A provocation, a question asker, open up ideas and deconstruct ideas to help clarify ideas...

6.10. We don't copy ideas, we borrow them... And here adults can help to mediate discussions around this tides!

6.11. A series of images shows how the children try and then retry and redefine their ideas and how they improve massively over time.

6.12. You see in these images taken over time how the learning (investigations and instructions and discussions). Again, it's about pace, time to revisit and think and not just move on!