A Desire to Mix Lovely Colours

I decided to ask the children about their ideas on developing our Atelier.

The Atelier is a laboratory, a workshop, that gives value to the expressive potentials and creativity of each individual and of all the children. It is a place of experimentation and research, a space in which the children delight in exploring. It was unanimously agreed that we should keep the building and construction aspect of it. The children were very clear that this is an area which stimulated their minds, hearts and hands and that they dearly want to maintain.

“Yes, we must keep it because me and Gustavo like building a lot in the Atelier. Building high stuff that you can live in and tree houses.”

“Yes, keep. I like to play with Cooper, Abhinaav, Henri, Saxon building.”

“I like to hide in boxes.”

“I want to build a space rocket. We need it, the building area.”

“We need more boxes, all of the big boxes, colour them and make designs and go inside them. Make like a dragon or butterfly or dinosaurs.”

It was decided that we would keep the construction element of our Atelier.

The conversation moved to painting. Farida explained to us that she would like a place to mix water and paints to make different colours, lovely colours.

Many other children were attentive to Farida’s suggestion and built on her ideas.

“Hand paint, hand paint and put hand here.”

“Yes, I want one place a painting and water and  get one bowl and get paint and mix with the water.”

“I like play colour.”

So over the next few weeks, with the help of the children, we will re-invent this space and develop an area dedicated to an exploration of colour and colour mixing. 

Giving the children time to experiment will cause them to fall in love with the materials and share that enthusiasm with their friends and teachers. We will aim to provide opportunities to explore paint in a variety of ways - water colour painting, painting at an easel, painting on a horizontal surface, using different brushes. Perhaps the children will be drawn to mixing a range of beautiful colorful jars of paint, inventing new hues and present these jars of colour as a gift to the space for all to use. The beautiful colours that the children will make will invite participation from many. I am looking forward to the symphony of children’s voices and the sounds of pouring, mixing and stirring.

I wonder what you would do if presented with jars full of splendid colours of paint?