“There is empirical and practical evidence that we can promote the development of thinking and reasoning in young children in the early years by providing two curriculum components—planning and reflection. Both are thoughtful activities that encourage children to consider what they are doing and what they are learning. They also promote a broad range of other academic, social, and artistic competencies.” -Ann Epstein
After a couple months of sustained interest in creating masks and paper disguises in the studio, I wrote In the last blog post about some of the mental planning I was encouraging before children began work on their paper mask creations. A series of thought eliciting questions helped to deepen the ideas, and also resulted in more detailed mask creations.
In her article, “How planning and reflection develop young children’s thinking skills”, Ann Epstein notes that, “Planning is more than making choices. Planning is choice with intention. That is, the chooser begins with a specific goal or purpose in mind that results in the choice.” Our art studio, and really our whole school, is abundant with open-ended choices, this concept of planning in order to encourage intention behind the choice a child makes is so important in the development of thinking and reasoning in the early years.
In order to encourage more intention behind the mask making in the studio, I began to require an added planning step to the creation process. From now on, when a child wishes to create a mask, I provide them with a mask planning paper, and a special planning pen. We discuss together their hopes and ideas for what their plan should look like.
As they plan, I work to record their words, and label their drawings. This element of the process sends a message to the children that their ideas are valuable, and it almost always encourages more ideas. As I begin to mark up their work, with their ideas and their descriptions the plan comes to life as a plan, not a product, but a map of their ideas for what’s to come.
“This is a horn. I don’t know why I have a horn. I just don’t know. This is the purple headband. It has purple eyebrows, and a black mouth, and it’s happy. It has eyelashes. Those are cheeks. Hey Val! I did feathers. Look it! I have a lot of feathers. I’m a person with a horn. A person mask.” -Evelyn
After they create their plans with the planning pen, I ask them to think about what colors they will use to create their masks, and they work on the next color planning step of their mask creation.
In this post, I’m sharing with you so many of the plans and the work coming out of the plans in the studio. When a child’s plan is complete, we treat it like this valuable nugget of information, it is kept safe in a planning folder, and hung on the mirror in front of where they are working so we can revisit it every single step of the way in the creation of their mask. There is constant conversation about the plan…Which part of the plan will you work on first? Which materials will be used to bring the plan to life? What parts of the plan have you not yet completed?
If you keep in mind the types of early mask exploration that were taking place…
and then you look closely at the examples shared below, there is no denying the power of a plan and the effect it has on the intention behind their work!
“This is really long hair like Rapunzel. She has light pink eyes. This is my crown. It’s purple. This is more long hair. My mask is a princess mommy. She has a crown and she’s happy. Her hair is long like Rapunzel. Princesses, nice princess mommies are happy about their children. That’s why she’s smiling.” -Kyla
“My mask is a bad guy. He has a mouth like this. And he has mad eyes. These are spikes coming out. He has four spikes.” -Theo
“This mask is going to have surprised eyes and a surprised mouth! It’s open. I made it into a kitty person. This part inside of the mouth is the tongue. She’s wearing a bow, and I just was going to wear a bow to school today, but I forgot to put it on again!” -Emmanuelle
Pictured below are the plans on the left, and some of the finished masks on the right.
“I was trying to think of an new kind of animal, so I thought of a cat and a unicorn put together. This is a unicat!” -Aavi
“This is a hospital sign (on forehead) because I’ll be a hospital worker when I wear this mask. Do you see the coat that goes all around my head?” -Daniel
“Well…this is a bunny rabbit mask. It’s a funny bunny because it has two different colored ears.” -Lucy M.
“These feathers goes all around the head of my owl mask.” -Solay
“She has a bow in her hair. That’s her ear, that’s the hole in her ear. The hearts are coming out of her mouth, and those are the heart strings. She doesn’t have bangs, but these are her eyelashes. She has a lot of eyelashes like me. She has nostrils. This is the mouth, but it’s not really what the mouth on the mask will look like. I did teeth, and I just forgot that she won’t actually have teeth. This is before she lost her teeth.” -Ruby
“Doesn’t it look like Mickey Mouse?! That’s because this is a Mickey Mouse mask and it’s a mask actually of Mickey Mouse wearing a green mask.” -Daniel
“These are the ears, the twirly hair, and the bangs. Those are tears. She has short hair and bangs. She has tears cause she bumped her head…on a mirror! I’m going to make the tears blue and the eyes are blue too.” -Emmanuelle
“This is a panda bear mask. Those are its ears, eyes, and whiskers.” -Lucy M.
“This is a mask for Emily. It’s Minnie Mouse.” -Daniel
“Ears, whiskers…I just thought of all the colors I wanted and I wanted all of them to be on the cat. All of these colors are my favorite.” -Georgia
“Elephant Mask” -Aavi
“Mouth, whiskers, hair, ears. It’s a white bunny cat. Because it’s half between a bunny and a cat. It was born to be a bunny and it stopped in the middle and became a kitty on the other half. It was born with a crown because it was supposed to be a princess cat bunny.” -Nora
“Puma Mask” -Owen
Art studio visitors are taking a lot of pride in their masks, and thinking a lot about how to wear them, make them stronger, and also share their hard work with all of you. There has been a great deal of talk about having an art show, or possibly a party where everyone gets to wear their mask. Stay tuned as we work out the details in the studio on the best way to display this hard work that’s been taking place!
Awesome!!