It was with much excitement that we began our journey with ‘Drawing Club’ this week! The P1 teachers got the opportunity to go on Greg Bottrill’s Drawing Club course a couple of weeks ago . The training inspired us to give it a go in our classrooms and I’m happy to report a successful week! One week of Drawing Club has shown me numerous benefits with: learning vocabulary, listening and talking, confidence in sharing ideas, generating ideas, exposure to the storytelling process, confidence in writing, learning that writing has a purpose, confidence in writing numbers, thinking about numbers, creativity, imagination, and so much more!
We bagan the week with the wonderful tale of Jack and the Beanstalk as our stimulus. This classic story had the children hooked! Alongside this, we learned 8 exciting words each taught with an action! Take a look at our video and learn them too! Warning ⚠️ : it’s a bit loud in this take! Their first attempt was very quiet so I asked for a ‘little’ more volume. 😆
The children began to use the new vocabulary in their discussions about the story and when drawing their pictures!
After reading the story book, we then focused on drawing. I modelled a drawing each day. Day 1: Character: The Giant, Day 2: Setting – The Giant’s Castle, Day 3:Adventure 1: What other treasure does the giant have? Day 4: What does the giant need to catch Jack?
The drawing in drawing club is very special and magical as we add codes to bring something magical to the drawing! We invite the children to write a letter/word (and hopefully soon for some, a sentence code) and a number code that makes something magical happen. The children had a great time using their imaginations when thinking about what their codes do. I was blown away by their creative ideas! 💡On Day 3, one of the children came up with the amazing idea that their number code would call “the giant police” so we used this idea for our adventure that day! The children were captivated by the process – I’ve never seen them listen so intently before! Wow!
I’ve absolutely loved using drawing club this week. It’s given me the gift of more energy, excitement and reminded me of the magic ✨ in storytelling! I’m excited to see how it helps the children develop their creativity, narrative and writing skills and more!
I’ve started making their drawings into booklets so that the children can look at them and use them to retell the stories. Here is a selection of the drawings from the different days. I love the energy, movement, detail and the story behind each of their drawings. There is meaning behind every mark they have made.
Here are some more photos of this week’s highlights.
Gym
Literacy & Maths
Play
There was lots of exciting child initiated play this week. The children also got the opportunity to work on their collaborative skills through paired activities. We also had a great outdoor session flying aeroplanes. We worked on aim, precision, distance and safety!
I hope you all have a happy weekend! Miss Carson 😊