Artist Shona Wilson facilitated professional development workshops with the preschool’s educators and children.  Shona Wilson creates ephemeral artworks that may last a few hours or decompose slowly. Our first workshop was held on Friday the 13th February. Shona shared the day with the children and the staff and we shared with Shona how Quirindi Preschool Kindergarten’s early childhood curriculum use our play based indoor and outdoor environment for learning. On Saturday 14th February, Shona held a workshop for our dedicated team of educators and management committee.

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Holistically, the project is to stretch our educational team thinking to use our imagination to share ideas, solve problems, and work independently and collaboratively. We will have the opportunity to think conceptually, spatially and work with colour and texture.  The impact on sharing time together, challenging ourselves, opening our hearts to nature, urban materials and creativity will be anything but transient. We will create for ourselves spaces for learning. It will provide time to challenge educator’s documentation skills, reflection, and collaboration with the children, as well as, share the children’s stories of their artworks with imagination bringing their story to life. Stage two of the project involves small group excursions to the local bushland and community. Visiting places around the community will make our learning more transparent.

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The project will capture the children’s dialogue and record the children’s words. Educators will use lively, engaging language, grammar, voice, tone, movement and gesture with an emphasis on description rather than interpretation. The documentation will include children’s drawings, sketches and photographs of the children’s work. Art explorations are rich experiences for children and hold many stories worth telling. We are aiming to hold an exhibition at Blackville Art Show in October 2015. The children and the educators will be learning collaboratively. We have named the project ‘Collaboration With Children’.

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That fascination with all the ‘little wonders’ of nature when they were young, translates directly to modern theories of design creativity (such as Design Thinking, Systemic Design and Holistic Thinking).

These kinds of skills and perspectives are becoming increasing paramount in developed nations, and to me this entire ‘way of thinking’ has its foundations in being able to connect (via learning) with the natural system as children.”

- Warren A Reilly, Industrial Designer and Lecturer