Julie Steinberg

January 28, 2015

A&HA 4078
Journal Entry # 1
Exploring Paper & Collage
Through the artistic exploration of materials comes new outcomes and new
discoveries (Burton, 7). This week, as we explored paper and collage, we were given
opportunities to make choices, reflect, and share ideas and new thinking about paperto
make new discoveries of how paper looks, feels, and what it can do. The paper
exploration reminded me how important it is, not only as a teacher of young children, but
in my everyday life, to stop and reflect and think in new ways.
I might ask students to illustrate a piece of writing or respond to a text with paper
and collage. For example, Nancy Beal (2001) suggests presenting materials and the task
in a way such as, here are the materials, what can we do with them to show? I
imagine presenting cut paper or scraps, asking, what can we do to show how the
character feels, or what happened in a story. Id want to encourage children to move
away from a focus on literal representation to making meaning in new ways. In our class,
as we talked about all the ways to describe and change the paper, I thought about how
important this time to explore and reflect is for young children, to give space for them
expand their thinking and creativity.
Reflecting on our own and others work allowed for further expansion of
thinking: describing the collages in terms of the artistic elements and exploring the
purpose and intent behind each piece of art. When looking at the collages, we were asked
open-ended questions such as What you notice? and Was that the same in your art
process? These are questions that I would ask children to build the skills of self-

reflection and talk, as they name their process, consider and appreciate each others
process, and give feedback and share ideas. These same open-ended questions could
easily be asked while looking at a piece of writing or the work used to solve of a math
problem.
Additionally, the open-ended quality of the exploration instructions allowed for
artistic choice and expression. The expectation was that you try something, not what
something should look like. The idea that there was no right or wrong way to put the
paper down on the format gave me confidence and allowed me to enjoy exploring the
materials. As teachers, we, of course, want to create enjoyable experiences to motivate
our students.
When we encourage exploration, choice-making, reflection, and idea sharing in
these ways, we foster these important skills in children. When we provide time to
explore, presenting open-ended ways to work with materials, we not only help children to
learn to select, control, and invent actions, and visual, relational, expressive concepts, but
we are creating within children a sense of themselves as meaning makers (Burton 10).

References:
Beal, N. (2001). The Art of Teaching Art to Children. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux.

Burton, J. (1980). Developing Minds: Beginnings of Artistic Language .School Arts

September 1980.