Painting with Tempera Cakes

Why Tempera Cakes

As our time with exploring textiles finished, I thought a lot about what next? Clay, drawing, paint? With all the children still so oral in their explorations I felt that paint would be an appropriate next step as it has high visual impact whether applied on a canvas, a little body or in a mouth. I decided to begin by using Tempera Cakes which are solid concentrated versions of liquid tempera paint. What is so nice about tempera cakes is that you spray these with water and then paint so the color can be very vibrant and dark or wash into lighter hues. In this form the paint also dries quickly and you can continue to moisten them as the children continue to show interest. This can also sometimes result in the paint becoming a liquid form which can be splashed! Part of the draw to using tempera cakes is that there are 3 different items the children can manipulate; the cake itself, the container that holds the cake (washed single serving applesauce container), and the shaving brush. Each item in and of itself can make marks and spread paint.

Presentation of Materials

I presented the children with one canvas in the middle of the floor with a moistened tempera cake in a container and a brush with paint already on it. They could then choose how they would use the materials. I began our painting experience with the color black because it has maximum contrast and visual interest when used. By only presenting one color at a time children can focus on 1 visual variable at time. You can easily see the hand print left in the canvas or fabric imprint left from a little knee crawling across the canvas. I also chose to have the children work around one canvas to promote interactions and a sense of community knowing that the much of the exploration would only accidently end up on the canvas. The children's exploration of the materials would be the main attraction not getting the paint on the canvas.

Friday Group - Contact Paper

With the small size of the Friday Group I thought I take a moment to look closely at the children's explorations in the context of Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development. From birth until about 18 months children learn about their world through their senses, reflexes, and physical activity. They are in what Piaget calls the sensorimotor stage of development. By manipulating materials children experiment with cause and effect and become more confident in their abilities to discover and make an impact on their surroundings.

Watch in the following video as Sebastien & Kaia work to pull up different materials from the contact paper and also use their mouths to further explore the fabric. They are both very industrious and exert a lot of physical energy in their exploration.

Children begin to categorize and reorganize information in their brains based on what they have discovered with their bodies. Ever wonder why a baby will do an activity over and over and over again? They are using their senses to unravel the mysteries of life that surround them, basically, their brains are encoding physical input from their movements and activity into information they can utilize. This is why they pull up on the unstable basket, drop an item from their high chair, or put every toy in their mouth time after time. In the following video, both Kaia and Sebastien perform actions that we have seen in the previous playgroup sessions. Kaia plays the "where's Kaia" game while Sebastien gives the velcro another taste. I found it interesting that this interaction was both children's first moments with the contact paper and that they replayed previous interactions with the materials.

Thursday Group - Contact Paper

I've had a lot of time to think & review the Thursday Group's exploration of the contact paper since we've been on a two week break and I'm finally getting to my blog entries. What I noticed most clearly about Zadie and Sebastien's interactions with the materials is that Zadie is still learning to trust me & the environment while Sebastien is uninhibited because he's in his own home and I am his mother. With this in the back of my mind as I watch and remember the interactions between Zadie & Sebastien I am drawn to the work Erik Erikson's and his Stages of Psychosocial Development. Erikson believed that for the first year of life children are in the Trust vs. Mistrust stage of development. During this stage babies are developing both the "external belief that significant adults will be present to meet the baby's needs and internal belief that they have power to effect change and cope with a variety of circumstances" (Mooney 2000, p.40). This is extremely important in the child's attachment to primary caregivers as well as in my work with them. My role is to provide a consistent and safe environment in which the children can freely explore and test their own sense of trust.

In the following video you will see Sebastien very enthusiastically engaging with the contact paper and other materials. Zadie, on the other hand, is interested and actively seeking interactions but is unsure of Sebastien's intentions and so she observes and adapts her intentions based on Sebastien.

In the following photos you will see that Zadie finally gets that yellow ribbon she was after and is actually quite excited about it. She then takes the opportunity to interact with Sebastien by giving him a little grab. Zadie then really began to trust herself, and her actions exhibited more persistence in her desires.

Even when the cellophane was hard to get off the contact paper, she kept trying to pull it up. Both her mother and I would offer assistance when needed (placing a new blue piece nearby) to help her achieve her desired task. Thus, building her trust in us to support her during challenging moments. However, she soon went back to trying to get that elusive red piece (which she was half sitting on) off the contact paper by herself. She eventually did get it but we had to subtly give her a little scoot off the cellophane.

Contact Paper

Contact paper is a medium I have used often with infants and toddlers. When placed sticky side up it allows for many different types of explorations. As children become more mobile they discover the sensation of sticking to something and when they get older the contact paper becomes an excellent medium for collage. It takes away the need for glue which can be overwhelming for a young child and yet still gives the child the freedom to stick an item down and then take it back up again if they want.

I placed the contact paper, sticky side up, on a large clear storage container lid. I purposely chose a surface that was low to the ground and could be placed on the carpet so the children could really move all around on it.

I also thought that having something big enough for several children to be around together would promote more interactions with the material and each other. Under the contact paper I placed a picture of each child in the group to entice the children to touch the contact paper. This really drew the children further to make full contact with the material.

The familiar cellophane and fabric materials were also carried over into this experience so that the children would have a chance to try manipulating them in a new way, either to pull them off or stick them down. Both on Thursday & Friday only one other child was able to join Sebastien at the playgroup but the intimate setting allowed for the children to make deeper connections to each other and the materials.