Arts Explorer #8: Pretend Play & Magical Thinking

A question mark or a cloud?

Art Word of the Week: Mass or Volume

When you look up in the sky on a sunny yet cloudy day, what do you see?

When I look up, I see clouds! But not everyone sees just clouds, some people look deeper and say they see a bunny rabbit or a bird or a fluffy teddy bear. To me, clouds are extremely fascinating and an interesting aspect to the weather cycle that occurs in our daily environment. Even though people love a clear, sunny day in the spring or summer there are also many people out there who absolutely love the clouds and enjoy just laying down in the grass and staring up at them, endlessly. 

There are many things that can be said about clouds when looking at them. People can discuss their shape or texture, their size and colour. An aspect of art that can also be talked about, that can tie into size, is the mass or volume or the cloud. Mass and volume refers to an object that is solid, three-dimensional body that has height, length and width (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009, p. 366 & 369). There are many characteristics (that can be tied into shape) that can be discussed when looking at clouds such as;

• how heavy & bulky OR light & delicate they are

• their geometric shape

• if they are angular or curved

• large or small

(Schirrmarcher & Fox, 2009, p. 142)

Clouds are interesting to look at as they form through a natural environmental cycle and, on their own, can be perceived in different ways. When you look at them carefully, you can make them out to be whatever shape or picture you feel that they resemble the most. People, especially children, love to look up and use their imagination as best as they can to create pictures and even stories about what they see above. It is also very interesting to look at clouds and talk to people about them because everyone’s perspective is different and everyone has different ideas of what they see and don’t see, kind of like optical illusions!

What Do You See? - I see lava exploding out of a volcano.

I remember as a child, when we first moved into our house with a backyard, my younger sister and I would lay in our backyard, all excited and look up at the sky at the clouds. We would talk about what we saw and laugh at each other and our crazy ideas of what we thought each cloud looked like. We love the summer time and would spend a great deal of time outdoors running around and playing. We have had many conversations and seen many different clouds throughout our childhood, thought of many crazy ideas and hilarious stories to go along with them!

To get children exploring their environment, looking at new things and getting them to think outside of the box, take them on a walk (preferably on a sunny but cloudy day) to a park, allow them to lay in an open grassed area and have them lay around, talk and look up at the clouds to see what they see. Children’s imaginations run wild and a great deal of conversation will spark and you will be surprised of the results that you hear from them! 

 

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J. E. (2009). Art & Creative Development for Young Children. Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning.