Artasia at Today's Family Fieldcote
EarlyON
🖌️ Artist Educator: MarĂa Puerto
Opportunity is Where The Magic Happens
Fresh into our first site of the week, we introduced wearable designs and bracelet-making to the Early Ons at Today’s Family in Fieldcote. While the Artasia staff were extremely excited with the new activities planned for Week Four, parents were a little more hesitant. “I don’t think my child can do this. She’s too young,” One parent told us. A few other parents also shared the same concern, and for a good purpose. Many of the children at Fieldcote were 2-3 years old, and it was reasonable that they hadn’t developed the fine motor skills yet for bracelets or weaving. Therefore, we also handed out markers and bingo dabbers for the younger kids to doodle with, and helped the older children create wonderful capes with different fabric and colors. But when I looked back, I was greeted with an unexpected sight. Instead of doodling on the fabric, one toddler was stretching her cute little fingers towards the container of big, vibrant wooden beads. Sensing the possibility of an exciting development, I dragged the beads closer to her and snatched a pipe cleaner from my bag. Before her big, curious eyes, I strung one brilliant, blue bead through the pipe cleaner. Finally, I put it in her hand, and watched the magic unfold.Â
At first, she was clumsy with it, dropping the beads or missing the pipecleaner by just a bit. However, with the guidance from her grandmother, she rapidly learned how to pick up the bead and how to string it through the pipe cleaner independently. She was laser- focused with her craft while thoroughly enjoying the process. Her eyes carefully followed the bead and made sure it was safely strung onto the bracelet. She not only surprised us, but also effectively used and developed her fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination! Following her example, the other kids too were inspired and created their own unique bracelets. They were engaged with the activity and did an excellent job at not only making art, but also teaching us that we should not underestimate the capabilities of children, and rather encourage them to explore different skills and try slightly more advanced activities even if they may struggle.
This experience highlighted that experimentation and failure is key in the recipe for continued growth and more fulfilling development. It turns out that you never know what someone is capable of until you give them the opportunity!
Experiences at Fieldcote Ancaster
The unique trait about Fieldcote Ancaster is that we are surrounded by nature 100% of the times and their lovely staff will encourage both us and children to use as much natural objects, dye, materials as possible. For week 1 with Fieldcote we encouraged children and caregivers to find objects around which would enhance their self-identity. Despite our group being mostly Early Ons, they were able to point at favourite colours, shapes, etc. Their caregivers provided us with their names, so each badge was personalized, and the children were able to self-reflect on how important their name is to their identity! Very lovely start of Artasia 2024.
For week 3, we decided that children and caregivers were going to experiment with tie-dye techniques, using turmentic and beetroot dye to create vibrant patterns on fabric. We were aiming to symbolize the warmth and vitality of community life around nature. Especifically for Fieldcote, we implemented a DIY stamps and textures workshop with leafs; caregivers were very excited when learning how to create stamps could enhance a conversation about enviroment and land and building community around taking care of our environment!
During week 4, we showed the children how to wearable art! Since we focused on the themes of identity and community on the last couple of weeks, we now focused on the building blocks of our identity and how this influences our view on the world. We help caregivers with the task of finding a simple wearable art that early ONs can perform and tried making bracelets with them; we successfully realized all of them were able and eager to personalize their bracelets. Finally, one of the early ONs sibling who was a couple years older than the group decided to create a superhero cape with some of the extra fabric we had from previous weeks; it was a massive accomplishment! Other kids decided to follow his example and we were given the most precious superhero capes out there!
For our last week with Fieldcote, we closed our journey with a grand celebration while exploring our relationship with food and sitting down at the table with our loved ones; sharing a meal and its importance to each child. For instance, we decided to ask the kids their favourite meal and most of them came up with fruits! We decided the best approach to this was to create a grand fruit salad where each child and caregiver was able to provide a portion of fruit made out of modelling clay and add it to a big bowl that would ultimately give us the final product. For most caregivers, this was a very enriching sensorimotor experience that allowed them to explore with the children a new form of arts and crafts that wasn’t explored until now. Most importantly, we were able to emphasize on the importance of healthy eating habits and enjoying shared meals with our beloved ones!
Thank you to our Focus on Youth team members Eddie Ivanchuk and Harshvi Patel for supporting us at this site!