Activities
Creative Workshops
Designed by Helen Lawrence
Helen Lawrence is a multidisciplinary Artist: painting, sculpture, music and storytelling. Specialising in nature connection and accessible arts for all, Helen has designed creative workshops for our preschool children.
Themes we explore:
Nature cycles
Transformation
Spaces
Homes
Bringing the outdoors in
Arts materials and techniques:
Drawing, charcoal, chalks, pastels
Printing
Painting
Sculpture, small scale transformations of objects, sticking, wrapping with wool and wire, simple weaving.
Sculpture- large scale collective construction (Willow)
clay for small scale modelling
Inspiration
- Nature walk/sound walk: gathering natural objects and “gathering sounds” (bird song etc.)
- Caterpillar/butterfly walk: collecting leaves, sticks for making and using books, stories, images of caterpillars, chrysalis, butterflies.
- Looking at colour changes of trees as inspiration for painting and colour mixing.
- Exploring birds, eggs and hatching.
- Storytelling – bird themed story, and storytelling songs. Thinking about how birds live, sing and how they make their nests
Art practice and making
- Making nests/ birds using clay, willow, fabric and natural found objects.
- Transforming soft toys into other ‘creatures’, following the theme of transformation; chrysalis, caterpillar to butterfly. (Like puppets, we can create stories/plays with them).
- Creating a nature house (large scale sculpture using willow, following ideas about birds, nests, home spaces, indoors/outdoors.
- Creating an indoor ‘outside’ area for housing the artworks (an abstract tree and nest sculpture).
- Story sticks- using sticks to paint and add materials to to create landscapes/characters.