Aim

To enable the children to express their ideas and feelings and to promote the development of the imagination.

Objectives

To provide a stimulating environment and to value originality, creativity and expressiveness.

To provide a wide range of activities that children can respond to by using their senses, developing ideas and expressing those ideas in a wide variety of way.

To provide children with sensory impairment with opportunities to experience and respond to different stimuli (e.g. sounds, objects) in a variety of ways.

The children will have opportunity to explore a wide range of materials and media which will enable them to begin to appreciate and understand the many different forms and purposes that creative activity covers.

Operating Policy

Programmes of work will be planned for each area of creative development.

The children will have access to, and opportunity to handle, equipment covering a variety of techniques and interpretations.

They will be encouraged to explore freely by themselves, with peers, and with sensitive adult input, in order to extend the knowledge and skills required to make informed choices and develop personal interpretation.

Programme of Work

The programmes of work will be based upon a mixture of general and topic activities. These will be planned to ensure a broad and varied experience is provided for the children.

The children will have opportunity to explore in an open-ended manner the properties of a wide range of materials/media. The staff will bear in mind that it is the process, and not the end product, which aids creative development.

Exploring Media and Materials:

Activities allowing children to explore and make objects using a wide variety of materials including: playdough, clay, plasticene, soap flake mix, soap snow, cornflour mix, wet and dry sand.

Collage activities such as: collaged shapes, texture collage, paper collage, paper bag puppets, paper plate faces, kites, hats, snakes, sand collage, cardboard, badges, glasses, nature garden, junk models.

Drawing activities using chalk, pastels, rubbings, felt-tips, crayons, templates.

Painting activities using a variety of techniques including: finger painting, squeeze bottle paints, paint and scrape, block painting, butterfly pictures, twig painting, roller bottle painting, stencilling, marbling, bubbles painting, brush painting.

Printing activities including: foot prints, hand prints, clay prints, hand and knuckle prints, fruit and vegetables,  roller prints, card prints, ball prints, mesh dab prints, leaf prints, sponge prints, shoe prints, car rolling.

Music

Individual free play with musical instruments,.

Group free play with musical instruments.

Moving to music.

Listening to live musicians.

Listening to recorded music.

Discussion of feelings which result from different types of music.

Singing.

Musical accompaniment to stories.

Imagination

Dressing-up games.

Home corner.

Role play with shops, post offices, doctor’s surgery etc.

Imaginative play with dolls and models.

Acting out and expanding on stories.

Individual and group discussions about ‘what happened next’ at the end of a story.

Responding to experiences/Expressing and communicating ideas

Individual discussion.

Group discussion.

Painting and drawing.

Model making.

Role play.

Playing musical instruments and singing.

Planning, recording and assessment

Topic planning takes place on a monthly or half-termly basis.  Activity planning occurs on a weekly or daily basis.  The topic planning and activity planning sheets used by the nursery are laid out to identify each of the seven areas of development. This ensures that Creative Development is considered whenever a topic or activity is planned.

Staff are able to observe the children and records of such observations can be made on the children’s personal profile sheets .

Samples of the children’s work which relate to Creative Development are kept as appropriate.

Assessment is carried out through a mixture of informal observation, interaction with the child, the use of the information on record sheets and discussion during regular staff meetings.  The information gathered during the assessment process is then used for future planning of activities for each child.

Information gained through recording and assessment will be shared with parents, other school staff and outside agencies as appropriate.