Every day the children experience a myriad of encounters with materials where they explore how materials behaviour, how they can use them and possibilities to change them. The children bring a wealth of experience to the mosaic project. The idea for the project arose when the children were constructing butterflies to hang in the library to create an atmosphere of warmth, beauty and comfort. As we embarked on our focus on materials and their properties it seemed timely to draw on this suggestion from the children and delve into it more deeply. This is a project that we worked on over two months in collaboration with Jen Krembs our Atelierista. This project connects with so much of what we have been thinking about over the year – including our unit of inquiry into the properties of materials, continuing ideas about making the library a beautiful and welcoming space, finding ways to learn with and through each other and finding ways to collaborate and relate to others.
What materials could we use?
The children initially offered suggestions about possible materials and ways of working in order to construct a mosaic. An interesting discussion ensued and below are some of the comments,
“Cement is very hard and you can not even break it.”
“It’s hard, like stones because stones are strong just like cement.”
“Iron is harder. Iron or stone for making it. We can make a stone thing and put the cement in the stone.”
“We need to make the parts really stick. We could put these materials on it and then put iron on it. Iron can make these kind of materials stick.”
“You could put some stuff on it and put plastic on it and put melted plastic on it. Melted plastic might stick to wood.”
“We can paint the stones.”
“We should have all of us make it so it’s fair.”
“Wood. Whenever me and my friends go to the Atelier we use wood and plastic.”
“We can make a design, we can make swirly stuff. We can use rocks. Paint them and put them on and put iron.”
“But how could we stick it?”
“But I know how to choose the thing to stick. We just have to agree together. Which ones (materials) the best ones? We can find the materials.”
“How can we stick everything on the back of the thing? I have a good idea for the spiral, these glass.”
“Baby rocks and sand.”
“Sand is a good idea.”
“For the metal, glue the magnet to the wood. When it is dry you can put the metal on and pull it off. It could be like a puzzle.”
“We can use these stones, tiles.”
“With clay we can make tiles. I can make tiles with clay.” (Kaiwen)
The conversation took a different turn as some of the children reflected on the colours that had been carefully chosen for the butterflies that are already hanging in the library space.
“When we were going to make our butterflies we choose two colours.”
“We choose calm colours.”
“Blue , green and purple and violet. It was light colours.”
“The bright colours make us too hot, the blue colours make us calm, the other colours make us happy.”
“We should put the sunset colours in the background.”
Why do you like to spend time in our library?
I felt that it would be useful to ask again about the library and how this space makes us feel, why do people like to read books in our library or spend time there?
The children describe it as a welcoming space and a place where they can enjoy reading.
“Because I like to read to read books and its fun.” (Haein)
“I can read a lot of books and study hard to read books.” (Jie Qi)
“Because I like the butterflies in it because it is pretty. It’s calm.” (Jaya)
“I feel calm.” (Malak)
“Because I like to read books. I like to read books so much and see what the story is about.” (Kshitij)
“Because I like reading books and the pigeon drives the bus.” (Nalin)
“Because we get to pratise reading and we get to sound out the words.” (Grace)
“Because I can read.” (Tale)
“Because there’s lots of books and everybody can read now and everybody can take turns at reading to everybody else and there are books about birds and flying and the big year book and funny books. It feels nice and calm because of the colours of the butterflies and there are the pictures of everybody in the class. I like how the shelves are ABC and the stands for the books.” (Violet)
What are your ideas about the design?
I wondered what kind of subjects might be suitable for the mosaic?
What is the most suitable image for the mosaic?
The children were invited to draw their ideas, subjects often acquire a clearer identity through the process of drawing
“Butterflies, like 100 butterflies flying around. stripy animals are really poisonous. And then three caterpillars. Sunset in the background.”
“The butterfly is flying into the flower and drinking some flower soup. One caterpillar was on the leaf and they became friends. The caterpillar has spikes.”
“There is two butterflies and they were friends and they went to the park together.”
“To make lots of insects and butterflies and flowers.”
“A spider web between bushes, a lady bird on a leaf. A worm on the grass. A butterfly and a sun.”
“First I’m going to draw the grass. Then I’m going to draw a tree.”
“I’m going to put a sunset colours and flowers and trees and I’m going to draw the sun going down.”
“Flowers and trees and grass and a sun. The sun set is going down and the stars come out.”
“Beetle, worm, ants, tree, sun, star, grass.”
“A house, people, butterfly, flower and ants on the grass.”
“A house and my mum and my dad and then I will put some butterflies.”
“The butterfly is flying in the garden. The birds have a lot of eggs. And the caterpillar is trying to eat the flower. And the tree is growing growing. The sun is still shining. The butterfly has beautiful wings. The flower is getting more and more beautiful. The bird like the butterfly. The bird be friends but they can’t play together because the bird has a baby. The tree already growed. And then it becomes a beautiful garden.”
“The sun is going down. The butterflies are trying to think what to do for their butterfly garden. They went to school and told the teacher why are the butterflies growing up so quickly.”
“The butterflies are trying to think what to do. They go to school. The teacher give them something, a seed to grow the flower. The flower grow and grow. The butterfly is happy and drink it.”
“I am making an aeroplane and a hotel and a person and a green mountain and a blue sky and a sun.”
“Flowers, paper stars to stick on, sun and wind, sky. I’m going to do some more and apartments.”
“I drawed stars, cloud, sun, butterfly, my dad and my mum and flower and a tree with birds, apples and spider.”
“I did a pattern on the caterpillar and a snail. A flower blocking the ants and the caterpillar.”
The children represented things they consider to be beautiful, important and interesting.
We seemed to reach a clearer definition of the image that could then be developed. The important elements seemed to be that it would be beautiful, that the colours should be predominately blues, greens and purples to blend with the butterflies that are already hanging and nature seemed to be an underlying theme. Images of butterflies, beetles, ladybirds, caterpillars, all the creatures the children delight in finding in the gardens outside and of flowers and plants.