Blossom Nursery Art Class Newsletter

November 2011

Dear Parents,

Please let me introduce myself: my name is Julie Dalloz and I am the Art Teacher in both Blossom Nursery and Blossom Village for the toddlers and preschool children.

Every two months, I would like to give you an overview of what kind of creativity your child is exposed to during my specialized art classes. Every week, you will find his/her artwork in the Smartbook with an explanation of what we have been doing or the artwork will be hung up in the nursery if it is a group work so please do keep an eye out for them!

In September and October, we created some art pieces inspired by the topics of the British Curriculum and Skygarden:

1. Welcome to Blossom 2. The 5 senses

During the first topic “Welcome to Blossom”, we explored different textured papers with our funky paper collage, using crepe and tissue paper, foil, lace, colourful cardboard paper...etc.

Then we created our own classroom signs, painting on an oval canvas and decorating with glitter and the photos of our faces. That allowed us to learn how to work together as a team and how to share our ideas.

Next, we covered the theme “Being a nice person” by working on the concept of sharing, with two children working on the same artwork, using newspapers and drawing some graphic lines (see below).

It was actually not an easy task for everyone to share our art pieces!

We next created a masterpiece for Halloween where all the classes from both Blossom branches participated. It was a great fun

and the children were very proud of that eerie landscape.

Afterwards, we celebrated the birth of Picasso by getting inspired by two of his famous paintings : “The Dove of peace” with the toddlers and “Punchinello with a guitar” with the preschoolers. We used the collage technique with different papers and fabrics, glitter, stickers, looking at the different shapes that we could find in (see below). And for the anecdote, when I asked Anthony in the Blue Birds class if he had ever heard of Picasso, he answered: “No, I don’ t know Picasso but I know Spider Man!!!”. So cute!

The next class (about “Hearing”) consisted of listening to some music while painting. When the music stopped, the children had to stop painting. They had great fun discovering the French multi instrumentalist and singer Mathieu Chedid.

The week after, for the occasion of the World Tolerance Day and the Unicef Children’ s Day, we replicated a masterpiece inspired by the artist Richard Long with his painting “Mud Handprints”. Printing our hands all together (toddlers and preschoolers) was a way to encourage fraternity, tolerance and respect between all the children and showing them how we are all different but equal (see right).

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Come and have a look at our exciting new Art project at Blossom Nursery!

At Blossom, we are always progressing and developing! As an artist and a wall designer, I am

now painting the garden wall (facing Lavender’s classroom, just beyond the gym). Each class will soon have its own garden lined with a huge mural (27m2) about nature where its own flower will be represented. Thousands of dots, patterns, mirrors and beads make up the mural and it is up to you and your children to seek different hidden shapes! How many can you see? Where is the sunflower? The buttercups? The poppy?!!!

You are all invited to the official unveiling of the wall on December 8th on the occasion of the Christmas Concert!

To find out more about my work, please have a look at my website: www.artandj.com

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Innovation and creativity: the benefits of teaching art to children…

Art teaches children to be creative and innovative because it values creative abilities and provides a safe venue in which to promote and express ideas.

Innovation and originality all occur when children explore art. And these skills help them to learn to form mental images to solve problems. As a matter of fact, how

can a child solve a complex scientific problem without the ability to think creatively and be innovative?