Issuu

Materials in Dialogue

2022/2023

Materials in Dialogue

Every material has its own qualities and personality and over time the material becomes a part of your language. ‘Materials in Dialogue’ led you on a magical journey of becoming active participants in your learning, as you constructed your own knowledge when interacting with materials, the environment and each other.

Throughout the year, as we explored and researched our chosen materials and their properties, it was very obvious to see your creativity evolve, along with your ability to think critically about the world around you.

What range of possible transformations could these materials undergo?

To fully engage with and explore the materials, a deeper understanding and dialogue occurred as you built on previous experiences and knowledge. You became artists, scientists and researchers. What follows is a wonderful dialogue between the materials as you met, discovered and ultimately transformed them.

Ms. Penny (Pedagogista)

“Listening should be sensitive to the patterns that connect us to others. Our understanding and our own being are a small part of a broader, integrated knowledge that holds the universe together. ”

Carlina Rinaldi (‘The Pedagogy of Listening’ from The Hundred Languages of Children)

Frangipani Journey – Discovering the world around us

Our journey this year has been one of discovery and connection. We wanted to establish those important early relationships with the people and the world around us. Connection is fundamental to human existence, and so learning how to create and maintain meaningful relationships is such an essential part of our lives. We provided you with meaningful experiences through which you were able to bond with one another and grow together.

The invitations we provided enabled the opportunity for you to collaborate. They encouraged you to listen to others, not always agreeing but finding solutions. It was a joy to see.

What we learnt, as a community of learners, was that communication is not just about talking, but also about listening. You become wonderful negotiators.

We truly have become a family away from home, creating a strong sense of belonging and well-being.

The beauty of diversity

We are a diverse group and we come from many different places with many cultures, traditions, and languages. We wanted to encourage you to appreciate and celebrate the differences and the similarities between us.

We explored our own self-identity and that of others through books and imagery. We invited you to engage in a few explorations which entailed us drawing self-portraits and portraits of our friends. These experiences helped us to strengthen our friendships as

These experiences also helped us to cultivate a sense of self belief and confidence in ourselves. After all of our explorations during this project, we were able to conclude that although we are all different in our own ways, we are fundamentally the same.

Lottie

Cooper Mete

Kate

Panni Skye

Mac Ca

Nhi

Jessica

Emma Dana

Chelsea

Minato

Tom Nu Sua

Unlimited imagination

We experimented with color in various ways throughout our journey. It was clear that these experiences sparked a great deal of wonder and curiosity from you all. The vast color spectrum and the ways we can play with it provided you with a platform to experiment with transforming colours, tones and shades.

Texture with soft pastel, Collaborative artwork

“The

Wider The Range Of Possibilities We Offer Children, The More Intense Will Be Their Motivations And The Richer Their Experiences.”

Loris Malaguzzi

Loose parts

Loose parts are open to interpretation and creative thinking. A loose part can become anything. Loose parts can be thought of as the way for you to unlock the cognitive and creative mindset that allows you to build, deconstruct, persist, create, and work together to unleash the power of creativity that we all contain. We have seen you all using shells, flowers, seeds, wool and buttons to name a few, in your imaginative cooking play.

Food

Play scenarios in our classroom almost always revolve around food, eating together, sharing food or making food for others. The food making aspect is central to your dramatic play. Even when holidays and airplanes are part of the story, there are always snacks involved.

When engaging in our food explorations, we wanted to make the experiences as hands on as possible, and make sure that you would come away with something meaningful through being deeply involved in the process. We provided you with creative ways that gave you control and autonomy.

By using powerful flavours such as salt, sugar, lemon and so on, we tested your ability to be discerning connoisseurs. It was tempting for you to sometimes add a lot of one thing, like sugar for example.

However, you learnt quickly that you can have too much of a good thing. We encouraged you to develop a positive relationship with food and learn to be open to trying new things.

“It smell so yummy.” – Mizuki

“It’s raining flour!” – Skye “Yummy sour!” – Ramen

Grand designs

Construction has been a big part of our journey. Our various building projects provided you with opportunities to learn how we are able to create designs and bring these to life. We took on small scale projects, individual projects, collaborative projects as well as very large scale projects. We did it all!

Tent City

The tent in our classroom took centre stage in a lot of our play. We invited you to recreate this little home, on a smaller scale, in any way you could imagine. This took us on a magical learning adventure in which we learnt to patiently create over an extended period. A beautiful and diverse city of tents grew around us. We also discovered that good things take time.

Can you find your tent?

Aurora Rainbow Castle

Since we had a lot of experience building, we decided to put our skills together and create a large collaborative structure. We invited you to use a combination of simple materials and see where it would take us.

We ended up creating the truly awe-inspiring Aurora Rainbow Castle!

What might we find in a castle?

“Many princesses.” (Skye)

“And many kings and many queens.“ (Nhi)

“And some witches.” (Sua)

“And flying unicorn.” (Panni)

A hanging ladder? Done! Stairs to a secret pathway? Done! A series of colorful flags? You got it! A big giant hamburger for the king? No problem at all. A tower that is high up to the sky? We’ll do it!

Wax crayons and sharpies, Dana

“If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, then let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it”

David Sobel

Nature

We believe that establishing a love for the natural world from an early age is very important. In the future, you will be the people that will have to protect our planet. This requires you to develop a deep and meaningful connection to nature. We encourage curiosity by finding pieces of nature, flora and fauna around us, asking questions and talking about the importance of the natural world in our lives.

We observed you develop a deep connection to water. Water is the most essential component of life that exists for us all, and so it is something we need to cherish and celebrate.

Through engaging in outdoor playful learning involving many elements, nature provided you with the kinds of experiences upon which your world views develope. These fundamental connections to the natural world are the start of you becoming responsible earth citizens of the future.

Researchers

Emma

Yumi

Mizuki

Mac

Minato

Mete

Cooper

Sua

Ramen

Chelsea

Panni

Lottie

Emily

Mr. Adrian

Ms. Tuyen

Ms. Thanh

Ms. Claire (Atelierista)

Ms. Penny (Pedagogista)

Artwork by Yumi

AURORA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

11 - 11A - 13 - 15 Tran Ngoc Dien, Thao Dien Ward, Thu Duc City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. +84 (028) 3744 2991 info@auroraschool.vn www.auroraschool.vn Academic Year 2022/2023