'My Loves Blue'

So I've gotten a little inspired to put my mess of ideas out there to the blogging world.

I'm hoping to use this as a place to record my professional progress both as a Children's Services Educator in a long day care service at ANU, and my bumbling about in my own creative endeavours.

A couple of years ago (barely pre-daughter #2) I ran Creative Image Making workshops with the toddlers and preschoolers of my centre. In 2009 this culminated in a beautiful exhibition of the children's work for the year. Around the walls of the room we had displayed a selection of all of their creative adventures with me, all set for their parents to view and have as a backdrop to the AGM.

The year had been so full. The children had used my DSLR camera to take their own photos (the parents didn't believe some of the shots were taken by 4 year olds). We'd designed our own monsters inspired by the Where the Wild Things Are book, and created monster masks. We'd studied a real honeycomb which some bees had started setting up in my yard at home. We'd studied light and shadow with an overhead projector, and reflected light with mirrors. We'd had one huge block making our own space ship from a giant cardboard box (that box was thoroughly loved to death over the space of 3-4 months). We'd painted canvas and batik, woven with wool and created spaces for sea creatures.

I'm out of time today, but I'll try to post up some of the photos and experiences in future posts.
Next year begins an exciting adventure into being an Outdoor and Art teacher for my centre. I have bubbling ideas of Sunflower Circles, Cob Cubbies and Whimsical Wild Wonderment. I hope to share some of it with you.

Oh, and the title of this post comes from a beautiful toddler coming in to my art workshop one morning, still tearful from separation. I asked her if she wanted to join in, she nodded, I asked her what colour paper she'd like and she responded "My loves blue". Something about the phrase makes my heart happy.