Tot Art
®
Brought to you by National award winning Artist
ART SCHOOL FOR PRE SCHOOL
ART WORKSHOPS FOR 6-10 YEAR OLDS
Tot Art - developping skills for life
Tot Art classes cover a range of activities, develop a range of skills & promote a creative way of thinking. These skills & abilities will be called upon when children start school. Wendy Briggs has won 2 major awards for teaching Art & has taught & written curriculums over the past 21 years for a variety of educational establishments from nursery up to art college. The lessons which Wendy Briggs writes for Tot Art classes involve activities & experiences for children in 5 out of the 7 areas specified in the Early Years Foundation Stage educational programme - click to read how
Tot Art is educational
Your child will explore visual elements, artistic processes, creative concepts, and become more visually aware of the world around them.
Image above: This drawing of a tree, by Fleur aged 3, was made towards the end of a lesson exploring the idea of looking at the spaces as well the branches. The children loved the concept of “what isn’t there?”
Tot Art builds confidence
Every child is treated as a unique individual and encouraged to make their own personal response to activities, which is valued & applauded.
Images above (click on the arrows to see slide show): A class of children aged 18 months - 5 years old all explored colour mixing & carried out a number of other related activities in order to build up their experience & arrive at a seascape image using what they had been taught in an individual way.
Tot Art improves fine motor skills
Children learn a variety of artistic processes and techniques, & through so doing practice & improve on their fine motor skills.
Image above: Learning to manipulate line to create a linear image, older children learnt how to create different types & widths of line to arrive at a recognisable image whilst younger children simply enjoyed experimenting with as many different types of lines as they could make & became better at holding a pencil & other media.This drawing above was created by one of my very first Tot Art pupils in Stirling, Scotland. Ruben who came to Tot Art classes for 3 years won a prize in The National Gallery of Scotland competition- click to read press article 'Ruben's National Honour'
Tot Art improves hand eye co-ordination
Children use a large variety of media and materials in a variety of different ways, which all helps develop & improve hand eye co-ordination.
Image above is just a tiny corner of a child's collage, based on the work of Kurt Schwitters, which just in this tiny corner alone involved selecting from a variety of colours, making a choice from a selection of textures, cutting, tearing, arranging & applying runny glue using a glue stick. Some of the many hand eye co -ordination skills, which are also learnt as part of the bigger artistic whole include measuring, mixing, pouring, imprinting, holding and manipulating different widths of drawing media such as pens, pencils and charcoal; applying paint using a variety of techniques onto a variety of different painting surfaces whilst using a variety of different painting tools, plus moulding & modelling with clay.
Tot Art develops art appreciation
Some Tot Art classes focus on the work of an Artist, which children look at, talk about, & are encouraged to make their own personal response.
Image above: A painting in response to looking at images of paintings by Van Gogh. The children loved the feel of squeezing paint through their fingers & smearing it on paper!