Building through Loose Parts, Recycled Materials, and Imagination: An Atelier Overview

by Bret Wood, TCEE Atelierista & Herons teacher

This school year has been filled with a lot of building so far – building friendships, routines, and strategies for different ways we can work together. In this new year, we can come back together and pause to reflect upon how comforting and nurturing one another has allowed our friends at TCEE to build the school into a creative community. I have been excited to see all the classes and ages work though their own individual milestones by building and creating a world through media and art in their own immersive ways. 

Expanding my involvement in each class through my background as an art teacher has been enriching, and nostalgic for me. I have been exploring the methods of Vea Vecchi in her work as an atelierista at the Reggio Emilia school in tandem with my practices. Having the classes share everything they have been working on each week has been a pleasure, and has demonstrated how each piece of the community we are building comes together to form a collaborative whole. TCEE has a wonderful collection of loose parts, provocations, and art supplies that challenge the way children explore and grow cognitively and physically. 

Working with clay allows the children to play with the idea of physics, balancing and molding a piece so its walls do not collapse, while simultaneously exploring science by engaging in cause and effect experiments that give feedback on how much water needs to be sprayed if the clay is too wet or dry. While molding and working clay, children build their hand muscles, developing fine motor skills required for expanding skills in writing and drawing. While exploring our loose parts collection, children can combine wooden pieces with a sensory activity, such as kinetic sand, or pieces of felt, which can be the beginning of creative small world play in which friends explore social emotional relationships while being sensorily grounded. These are just some examples of what makes being an atelierista-”art teacher” fun and fulfilling. 

To my students–

Observing you challenge and surprise one another as you build your ideas and community has made me feel inspired by the many years of wonder we have passed down from generation to generation.

Yonim

Seeing you all start off this new milestone together has been full of wonder; I’ve loved watching you actively explore your classroom and every part of your environment together to determine how you will play, manipulating your surroundings, watching objects roll around, and hiding materials in others. I’ve challenged myself in transforming your classroom into different environments with new colors, reflections, and textures each week. As some of Elmo’s biggest fans, your passion for puppetry and movement made art class increasingly fun and dramatic each week. 

Barvazim

From the beginning of the school year, your curiosity has given you the inspiration to build creatively with whatever you can get your hands on! I immediately noticed how active you all were in building on what you knew about familiar materials and provocations and noticing how they could be combined. Experimenting is always happening in your environment. We all build at different speeds and the way you all share and play together has helped friends observe one another’s play and deepen explorations. Fascination with others' play is just the beginning as you collaboratively build soupcan towers then delight in knocking them down together, or watch how our bodies' shadows grow as we walk closer to the light of our projector.

Tukim

Your classroom is an immersive experience for all the senses. You always make me feel like I am cozy and at home, even while we transform your room into a new place to explore, like a jungle or an airplane. I love watching the ways you adjust to light and darkness. Watching you use mirrors and the color adjusting light table with loose metal parts and tiles revealed your passion for building on connections to people and objects, and exploring the multiplicity of perspectives among your surroundings.

Yanshufim

Thank you for always building on your enthusiasm each week; you and your teachers consistently bring a passion for building and creating. I’ve loved watching you all sit with a partner as we practice drawing shapes together, trying different media and even switching spots with a partner to work on their drawing too. The way you build on each other's ideas makes art class fun. Thank you for always being up for making art playful and sharing your fun and silly sides with one another; we learn so much about one another from sharing ourselves in our work together. I’ve loved hearing you talk about Cindy Sherman’s photos, and seeing all the ways you like to dress up and create characters for our photo shoots.

Agurim & Herons

Everytime we meet we always build upon the art spark that is in each of you. Keep being enthusiastic about what you are making and being brave to talk about your ideas. Sharing is very important, especially as we build on listening to one another and appreciating our art. I loved seeing you all collaborate as you explored the Light and Color room during Hanukkah; working together, one of you used the old projector to arrange stencils and placed colorful translucent gems on them, while two other friends used markers to draw outlines, while the others added in the colors. Watching you build art together and finding roles that you each enjoyed revealed how building teamwork can be inspiring. 

Nesharim

You are all artists and I see a budding builder in each of you–a team of painters, sculptors, architects, designers, drafters, and potters. You all build your classroom into a multimedia space very quickly and with passion. As artists you independently honor your art by following your hearts–deciding which pieces should be displayed in the classroom or the hallway, which are to be taken home, or “Not Quite Ready Yet” and need to take a break in your personal drawer. The way you build on multimedia combinations, such as projections and light, translucent sheets, fabric, felt, clay, ink, watercolor, oil paint, pastels, wooden loose parts and wire made each art class a bounty of wonder and adventure.