An A to Z of enhancements: L is for large-scale art

Large-scale art enhancements start by creating a large ‘canvas’. Outdoor floors and walls can be a canvas when children are given water buckets with paintbrushes or chalks to explore with. Other painting surfaces can be made by using a roll of backing paper, wallpaper, or an old sheet. These can be laid horizontally on the floor, onto tables, or vertically attached to a fence or wall.

The children will be using different muscles depending on where the canvas is placed. Children often enjoy lying on their fronts to draw on large paper that is placed on the floor indoors, developing different physical movements from when they are sitting upright at the table. When children use paints on a canvas of paper on the floor, they tend to bend down, stretching, and leaning forwards. Painting on a canvas on a wall will encourage those large-muscle, shoulder and arm movements in a different way, in a more upright position.

Development Matters states that giving children these kinds of large-scale art experiences can ‘help children to “cross the mid-line” of their bodies. When they draw a single line from left to right, say, they do not need to pass the paintbrush from one hand to another or have to move their whole body along.’

TOOLS

These types of projects are great for child-led creativity – we use a range of paints and tools for the childrento use in whichever way they would like. The tools can include large paintbrushes, small hand rollers, giant rollers that children can stand and paint with, sticks, and spray bottles with watery paint in. Children also like to use their hands as a tool to paint with and at times we place a paint tray on the floor outside and children put on wellies to paint using their feet. Children are encouraged to put on their own messy playsuits independently and they are trusted to top up the paint themselves. This helps children to develop confidence, independence, and a sense of responsibility.

All throughout the experience of accessing the large-scale art enhancements, the children are communicating with each other on various levels. Some are talking through what they are doing, some will give suggestions to others about what they could do, some will ask questions to others about what they are doing, and sometimes they will have discussions about sharing the tools and equipment. When we have finished, the large artwork is often displayed outside where the parents collect the children to prompt discussions about what they have been doing. The children can be heard proudly talking about their collaborative creations.

ADULT ROLE

Sometimes our large-scale art enhancement will have more of an adult's input, which may guide the children's art in a certain direction. The children were particularly enjoying the book The Train Ride by June Crebbin. At whole class ‘together time’, we had read the book and talked about all the sights the main character sees from the train window. They were very engaged and it prompted lots of different vocabulary being used to describe the illustrations. The next day I made an enhancement because I wanted to further develop these opportunities for talk about the story, and about their own experiences of being on a train ride if this was something they had done before. I covered a table with a roll of paper, placed a copy of the book on it, and provided baskets of various crayons, pencils and felt pens. I had drawn a very short piece of train track using a black felt pen and had drawn one sheep and one tree; the rest of the large sheet was blank.

When the children saw the enhancement, they decided to carry on the train track. They drew more sheep and trees and made the decision to add more items, such as flowers, the sunshine, houses and a boat in the sea. They talked about what the main character saw out of the window on their train ride. ‘I'm going to draw a mummy horse and her baby like in the story,’ one child said to another. ‘I'm going to draw a shiny red tractor,’ another child said, remembering the adjective that was used in the text. Some children had the idea to go and get some toy trains from the small-world area and played with the large picture, using it like a playmat.