We have been working on a long-term education project with Blue Lion Preschool named “The Generous Garden”, a 10-week programme which includes a resource kit and lesson plans for preschool educators to implement the sessions in their preschool settings.
Supported by the MSE SG Eco Fund, The Generous Garden is a prototype of an idea we have been thinking about for some time - on how making, art, and ecology can all weave in together as an experiential programme for younger children. We are grateful to have met one of the preschool’s advisors during a Wild Art hike in 2021, and to find the right team and funding to bring this idea to fruition! To get the space started, we needed help from Alika from @seedfolks, who helped to prepare the equipment and good soil needed to get the plants started in the new space, and the plants have been grown a lot in a few months.
We have some of the sweetest kids in this programme. Under the guidance of the teachers, they have been up to making different things…
The children have been making inks and artworks with the help of different parts of the plants, from the roots, leaves, flowers, fruits… while learning about how they grow.
They have been exploring organic textures from the garden, making prints and brushes from the bamboo tree at the front gate.
Under the guidance of Ms Xuan, the children have also been learning about how the plants grow, such as the strength of roots that ground plants into the earth, and the beautiful fruits that some of them give.
There were many things we learned together with the teachers during the course of the programme, with two in particular that stood out to us.
The first lesson was on how to accept the playful mess that comes with more open-ended making. Making paints is a lot of fun - the pounding, mixing, squeezing, and the smells and sensations that come with. The process is messy as it involves different materials and tools, and of course we observe, the messier it gets, the more fun the kids seem to have! But when we compare having to hold sessions indoors and outdoors, certainly there is a lot more anxiety about cleaning up indoors. When making is held outdoors, also since the material are all from the plants and earth and so they can be washed back into the soil, clean-up becomes a much simpler process!
The second reflection was on dealing with the outdoor heat typical in Singapore, especially in the afternoon. This is the more challenging issue because the team has to work within the usual curriculum time. The teachers have been adaptable and intuitive by simply having the children shift to shadier spots in the garden, and being more aware and observant of how the sun shifts throughout the day.
We hope that this project with Blue Lion Preschool can be a germinating seed in exploring how school gardens can become more active and interactive sites for experiential learning in the long-run, whether learning through outdoor play, edible greens or artmaking, or a blend of all. :)
We also hope that by growing our own art material, and equipping educators with the right tools and techniques, that there can be a broader perspective on what artmaking can be like for both the educators and students.
We will be heading into Kuala Lumpur again for the second part of our residency at Rimbun Dahan, as this Generous Garden programme wraps up for this run.
Till next time,
Shirin and Liz
Thank you for reading!
We hope that you enjoy reading this post on our collaboration with the educators and children at Blue Lion Preschool.
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