Sustainable Art

Children at Rachel Keeling are encouraged to be creative and their creativity is supported in many ways. This term staff noticed that many children were creating paintings, models and drawings repeatedly and the 'going home' basket was full to the brim each day with creations to take away.
We considered the impact of this on the environment and attitudes towards consuming.
Staff decided to offer more creative experiences which children can engage in that are sustainable: with no end product to take home.
Our collection of natural resources and transient art objects lends itself beautifully to this. 
Children engage for sustained periods, alone, in pairs and alongside each other to lay out their designs and talk about them, enjoy them, maybe photograph them and then pack them away.
Everything can be reused again.
Today one governor observed a child deeply engaged in creating a completely symmetrical design. When we look in her Special Book we noticed she had done something similar two terms ago using natural and transient art materials. The earlier design was laid out in piles, quite haphazardly and to see this development of pattern, colour and symmetry was wonderful.
See if you and your child can create transient art in the park: using sticks, stones, feathers and leaves?