Tuesday 5 November 2013

National Trust workshop - Art in Nature

We spent a lovely morning at Gibside today, doing one of their educational workshops - Art in Nature. The workshops we have done at Gibside have been enjoyed by most of the children as the wide open space suits them well and they can still wander and touch things whilst listening and learning. The learning team have been great too - sometimes it is obvious that group leaders are not comfortable delivering to a mixed age group, but the team at Gibside are relaxed and engaged with all the children from age 2 to 9. They let the children speak when they want to and answer their questions.

It was very cold today - the children had a run around to warm up first.


We looked at some paintings of Gibside landscapes. The children then did some painting using mud and sticks.


We talked about colours found in nature and made crowns using bands of card with double-sided sticky tape on them. The children stuck different coloured objects to their tape.




We also talked about texture and did lots of leaf and bark rubbings. Harry really enjoyed this part.



There was one more activity, but everyone was a bit too cold to do anything else so we will save this one to do on our own one day. We were shown pictures of land art created by Andy Goldsworthy on the ground from natural materials - a flower made of coloured leaves and dark objects set against light backgrounds were some of the examples. I think Harry and Peter will enjoy doing this and we have quite a collection of pine cones, sticks, acorns and conkers to start with at home!

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