As usual, term 2 in the Studio has been super busy and productive. We’ve seen the introduction of Makedo tools, (kid-friendly tools that are designed for construction with cardboard, including tiny kid safe saws, screw drivers and plastic screws and scoring tools for creating folds in thick card). These tools have been a great thing as often in the past, children would have ideas that they couldn’t practically create without significant help from me, and now they are working much more independently after a little guidance on how the tools are used. These tools are generally used by the Minasan, Kodomo and Koorlongka kids. Still, even the Pikanini’s are taking an interest in the plastic screws and screwdrivers and proving their capability (with a little more guidance than our older kids, but regardless, I’ve been impressed at their fine motor skills).

The basic beginnings of Pixel art are also being introduced in the mornings in Minasan, and we’ve been exploring a MIDI guitar used to operate music software.

My visits to the baby’s room have included some drumming, sensory play, continued work in drawing and painting skills (fine motor/hand-eye coordination development), and exploration of musical instruments.

The Pikanini’s have been doing their usual endless experiments with painting, using eye droppers, rollers, stamping, stencils and painting with clay, as well as role play writing with our keyboards and pencils and continued skilling in holding and strumming our ukuleles. They also like to count basically anything that’s around the room.

Our Kodomo kids have created a paper Mache vase full of flowers made from donated CDs with felt petals, which helped me colour and collage over two cardboard bird sculptures. They have also been playing our ukuleles and working on their cutting skills.

Koorlongka has done some basic experiments with various items, and some pipe runs stuck to the fence in our Wild Space (finding out what rolls down the pipes the fastest using dice, bouncy balls, ping pong balls and marbles). As well as experimenting with masking tape to create stripes in their paintings, using our scanner and moving the items being scanned around as the scanner is running to create some really interesting effects in Microsoft Paint and continuing to work on their mouse skills in Paint 3D.

Mr Marwick
Atelierista