Each month we move around The Lightbox and help our Mini Gallery Explorers to learn more about art or heritage and how to look at it in different ways. Today we are looking at modern works which have been lent by The Ingram Collection, which is housed at The Lightbox. ‘Picnics’ is today's theme, and we weave in references to the paintings on display as part of our day out before enjoying some stories and craft time.
As always, we start with five to ten minutes of free play. Today we have open-ended resources to encourage creativity, as well as the theme of picnics being about making friends and sharing. These include:
- building blocks to create objects for a picnic
- cups and plates ready for a tea party
- a bucket to make some sandcastles on the beach.
We then start with a rhyme to welcome everyone and remind ourselves what we will be doing today and encourage the adults to get involved. Now we are ready to explore the artwork on display.
ACTIVITIES
First, we need to make sure we have everything we need for our picnic, so we start mime packing our picnic baskets with cups and plates, food and drink. Our baskets are now becoming very heavy, so we go to a sculpture of a horse and ask if it can help us by carrying our load. We give out cups for the children to use to make the sound of clip-clopping hooves. They can feed the horse some carrots we find in our picnic baskets.
We then walk around to a painting of the beach so that we can take a swim in the sea. We take out our parachute so that we can create the waves with the adults, and the children can dive underneath to take a swim in the sea while pretending to dive like another of the sculptures.
We are starting to get hungry now with all this fun, so we think it's a good time for our picnic. We sit under the artwork with a tea party scene and sing ‘Polly put the kettle on’ with all the actions to engage the children in movement. We get our picnic items together now and use:
- a blanket to sit on
- cushions and beanbags to get more comfortable
- plastic plates and cups to eat and drink from
- jelly moulds and cake tins to create some sweet treats.
These are all laid out to mime adding the food and drinks. We have an array of food, the children tell us, from sandwiches and sausage rolls to jelly and cake and fizzy pop.
After 20 minutes and while we enjoy our picnic, we are going to have a few stories, starting with The Disgusting Sandwich and then The Highway Rat. We always make sure the books relate to the theme and are relevant to the EYFS. While the story is being read, the children will have conversations about what is happening and take part in some of the dialogue.
Each session involves some craft time. We want children to be able to remember their day, so we hand out colourful craft materials to create their own imaginative picnic plate.
After 40 minutes, it's time to say goodbye and so we have a celebration rhyme which helps to end the session on a high.
PLANNING
We look at EYFS frameworks to ensure the development of the children is thought about. We always ensure we have thought about the artwork on display, plus safety precautions relating to these, to enable the children to explore as much as they can without barriers.
We want to create a free, accessible session that is open to parents/guardians and care-givers for EYFS children to not only engage more comfortably in an art gallery or museum but also to learn through play and socialisation.
The Lightbox, Woking
Number of visitors: 63,981 from 2022-2023
Collection: Ambitious temporary art exhibitions, works from The Ingram Collection and a local history museum that shares Woking's story.
Early years offer: Mini Gallery Explorers; and Mini Painters – 40 minute sessions delivered monthly. Every session follows a theme linked to the art or heritage on display, or artists.
