Artasia at Helen Detwiler EarlyON

Week 1 of our programming was hot and sunny, perfect for using shadows to create art. At Helen Detwiler, there was a young girl not yet two who was interested in the paper and markers we had, although she didn’t quite understand what a shadow was. After a quick demonstration, her mother helped her trace the shadows she was making on the paper at first, then let her create what she wanted from that. I noticed that she was very intrigued by the ants that would crawl onto her page she pointed at them, first concerned about them. I’m not sure if she was scared they would hurt her or that she might hurt them. After I told her that they were safe, she was happy when she saw them and would say “hi ant” and “bye ant” as she would follow them with her markers, creating lines where their shadows were until they left the page. The child following the ants was similar to how her mother followed her when she was creating the first few lines of shadow tracing and similar to the demonstration I gave in the beginning, she was learning from watching us. Even if she wasn’t sure what it meant, she wanted to experiment with it herself and see what she could make. I sat with her as she drew and tried to explain what a shadow was, telling her that the ants block the sun, and how that makes the space under and behind them dark, and that’s what a shadow is. I wasn’t sure she understood what I was saying but I hoped it made a bit of sense. A few weeks had passed and on the third week of the program, the child and mother came back to the centre. The mother told me they weren’t meant to come but they realized I was going to be there, so they wanted to come one last time before the child entered daycare, as they loved the activities from the previous two weeks. At their final session, the mother came up to me to tell me that since the first week the little girl was incredibly interested in shadows and had her mom explain what they were multiple times so she could understand them and how they worked. According to her mom she would point at the ground whenever they were outside and say “my shadow” and “momma shadow” when the sun was bright enough to create them. While we were in the room she even pointed at the ground under me and said, “you shadow” and under the table, “table shadow” now learning that shadows could happen indoors too!

– Wren Breeze