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If you don’t know by now, children and colours are like sunshine and the seaside- they can’t be imagined one without the other. I can remember the faces and personalities of some of the only children I’ver met who didn’t enjoy colour mixing. They were those children who would watch on act a safe distance; making connections, eyeing mixing techniques suspiciously, and delighting in the joy of others as they played. Perhaps not in Nursery, but certainly by Reception, these children would have joined in, whether it be for only a minute, or many many days of carefully considered work.

Unaided and unprompted, children see blobs of primary colours as invitation enough to mix. We have all placed, at some point in our teaching life, paints in beautiful pre-mixed palettes, awaiting children to paint a Picasso-esque masterpiece, only to find them making brown for the millionth time with a brush stirring in either hand. Whilst this genius of fine-motor control should be applauded, it can be ...

Today on the blog we are joined by our wonderful guest blogger Jaime Bruce(Follow on Instagram here at https://www.instagram.com/jaybruce/. Jaime is an early years teacher from Australia who works in London. Her setting is play based, with a strong focus on sustained shared thinking, child-lead activities, and following individual interests.  Jaime 's guest blog today focuses on the joy of art. 

Walk inside the Early Years at my school, and the first thing you do is duck under the paintings and mobiles that hang from washing lines and “make-shift galleries” hanging everywhere. Head outside, and the chalk is in full use, the water colour paints are being liberally thrown at the prepared paper, and leaves and sticks are carefully lined up into patterns in the mud kitchen. The real joy of art in the Early Years, is that there is absolutely no definition of what really constitutes “art”. It permeates through every aspect of a child’s day: from a casual mark-make on the whiteboard of the...