accueil site > Paysage et patrimoine > 01. Teaching materials > 04. High School > From the perception of the landscape to the words to tell it
PROJECT A garden or a landscape is primarily a sensible and physical context. It presents itself in the form of colours, odours, sounds, tactile sensations to explore, everything which will inspire the creation of ‘carnets de jardins’ or garden logbooks.
OBJECTIVES
To put the sensorial exploration at stake
To stir imagination
To frame the languages
COMPETENCES
To perceive sensations and be able to convey them by employing either the home or a foreign language
To be able to use the log/notebook as an instrument in itself and as a means of verbal and plastic language use
MATERIALS
‘Framing’ instruments of different shapes
Mirrors
Paper, notebooks, crayons, pastels
Photo cameras and drawing sticks
Scarves
Collection boxes
DEVELOPMENT
1. Gathering the sensations
Seeing
To isolate some details observed in a garden or a landscape : a patio or a little bridge, the details of a statue, the veins in a stone, a paved path, the cut down branches, etc., the different perspectives that can be caught while seeing.
To gather the different forms which define a fruit tree garden, for example : apples, pears, plums and their different shapes : round, stretched, bobbin shaped, etc.
In a French garden, getting aware of the regular shapes of the alleys, lawns, the symmetry of the flowerbeds, the spots of colours, the architecture, etc.
Getting aware of the details concerning the flowers when observed closely from afar or of their colour design, or the waving lines of the garden paths, etc.
To realize a colour board with different hues and shades to reproduce the natural hues and shades : different greens, reds getting from purple to orange, or the red of the maple tree in autumn in the Albert Kahn’s garden.
Touching
Wandering in the garden, blindfolded, in order to better explore and compare the tactile qualities of the elements it is composed of.
To pick-up, classify, preserve and choose some elements to be inserted among the leaves of the notebook : soil, vegetal elements, twigs and sticks, etc.
Smelling By the same means, getting to elaborate an olfactory notebook involving the perfume of the flowers, of particular foliage, fruits, soil, grass, etc.
The sound elements can be recorded during the same walk by using the same criteria and can constitute a catalogue of sounds to be explored, identified and classified.
2. Structuring the languages
At each stage, some words and phrases will be noted down in order to :
describe the sensations registered
express what everybody has felt.
This way of structuring the sensations will enhance mental images hitting the different languages. As a consequence, choices will be operated to create a sort of personal itinerary and build up a ‘garden notebook’.
FOLLOW-UP
To research the following :
the history of the garden or of the landscape explored
the vegetation involved (trees, plants, flowers, etc.)
the animals living there
To build up scale models, paint or draw on the themes related.
EVALUATION
It will rest on the relevancy of
the elements gathered
the project of the notebook as a plastic and literary realization
the structural coherence between text and image,
Aline Rutily, Association ‘Paysage et Patrimoine sans Frontère’