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Andrew Wright
Art and Crafts with Children
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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First published 2001
2011 2010
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ISBN: 978 0194378253
Printed in China
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank:
Julia Sallabank and Alan Maley for their sensitive and thoughtful guidance in the planning and writing of this book.
The teachers and children who have tried out the activities in this book, and helped me to improve them.
Livia Farago for sharing her ideas.
My wife, Julia, for her support and professional sharing.
My children, Timea and Alexandra, for their ideas, and for their constant willingness to try out my ideas.
Line illustrations by Andrew Wright © Oxford University Press.
The publisher would like to thank the following for their permission to reproduce photographs:
The Bridgeman Art Library pages 11 (Rembrandt self portrait/Mauritshuis, The Hague), 56 (Facsimile of Codex Atlanticus/Private Collection).
Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material in this book, but we should be pleased to hear from any copyright holder whom we have been unable to contact. We apologize for any apparent negligence. If notified, the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.
To Timea and Alexandra Wright
The author and series editor
Andrew Wright was a student at the Slade School of Fine Art, the premier postgraduate art school in Britain. He has continued to paint, draw, and illustrate his own books. At the same time, he has continued to work with children – both his own, and those he meets in schools, drawing, designing, making books, and producing shadow theatre productions. As an art teacher he was, for 15 years, Principal Lecturer in Art and Design at the Metropolitan University of Manchester. As an author of language teachers’ resource books, he has published two other books in this series: Storytelling with Children and Creating Stories with Children. As a storyteller, story-maker, and book-maker, in the last eight years he has worked in ten countries with over 40,000 children. As a language teacher trainer he has worked in 30 countries, and was the founder of the IATEFL Young Learners Special Interest Group.
Alan Maley worked for The British Council from 1962 to 1988, serving as English Language Officer in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, and China, and as Regional Representative in South India (Madras). From 1988 to 1993 he was Director-General of the Bell Educational Trust, Cambridge. From 1993 to 1998 he was Senior Fellow in the Department of English Language and Literature of the National University of Singapore. From 1998 to 2002 he was Director of the graduate programme at Assumption University, Bangkok. He is currently a freelance consultant. Among his publications are Literature, in this series, BeyondWords, Sounds Interesting, Sounds Intriguing, Words, Variations on a Theme, and Drama Techniques in Language Learning (all with Alan Duff), The Mind’s Eye (with Françoise Grellet and Alan Duff), Learning to Listen and Poem into Poem (with Sandra Moulding), Short and Sweet, and The English Teacher’s Voice. He is also Series Editor for the Oxford Supplementary Skills series.
Foreword
There was a time when teaching English to young children was conceived of as mainly a matter of involving them in songs and games. Songs and games of course remain important for young learners, but our ideas have evolved considerably in recent years. We have come to realize that, for these kinds of learners, there is a need for more than just teaching the language – rather the language is just one element in a process of helping them to develop as ‘whole persons’: an educational rather than just a training process.
This book is one response to this need. The focus is on involving children simultaneously in activities promoting their personal development and in helping them to learn the language. Art and craft activities serve these twin aims in an ideal fashion. While making things, the children also make meaning. As they explore shapes, colours, textures, constructions, they are extending their experience and understanding of the world – and doing it through the medium of the foreign language.
We are fortunate that, in Andrew Wright, we have a unique blend of experience and expertise in art and in language teaching. For fifteen years Andrew was a teacher of art and design. He has been able to draw on this experience to inform his later work in language teaching. As an artist, he has a proper understanding of the educational value of art and craft in developing children’s understanding and sensitivity. He is passionately concerned that we should not trivialize art and craft activities just because the learners are young! As a language teacher and author, he appreciates the need to structure activities and to provide a framework of encouragement and support.
The book is a treasure house of imaginative, involving, and above all, practical activities. It is an invaluable addition to the resources of anyone involved in teaching younger learners.
Alan Maley
Introduction
Language learning and art, crafts, and design
Children learn by doing. When they are involved in art, crafts, and design activities, language can play a key part. Although much of what is done in art, crafts, and design is non-verbal, for this book I have chosen activities in which language plays a central role.
The