collaboration and scaffolding

This week Amy and I collaborated in the studio.  We worked with our extended primary children to further explore ideas, interests and questions that have evolved during the year.  We identified several topics of interest: volcanos, animals, people, planes and toys.  Each child joined one of these groups based on observed engagement over the year.  The groups met with both of us to implement their ideas both individually and collaboratively.  As the week progressed, it was clear that scaffolding is a vital part of what we do.  Scaffolding refers to a practice of providing the necessary support and guidance to help a child progress from one level of competence to another level.  For instance, children can conceive of great heights and grand ideas but their capacity to implement those ideas is often limited by present abilities and experience.  One of the roles of the teacher is to build the necessary framework for each child to climb his or her mountain, no matter how high. 

Volcanos have been erupting in the studio for weeks and as a grand finale, the volcano team created a paper mache' gorgeous volcano and made several smaller volcano maquettes in clay to be fired and used on another day with red food coloring, baking soda and vinegar.  Stay tuned for more explosions to come.

A few children explored transferring a drawing on paper to a clay surface and then personalizing it using a additive and subtractive method of sculpting, creating a relief tile.

With one-on-one assistance and lots of conversation and exploration the children realized their vision in style.

Some children explored translating a drawn image into a three-dimensional form. 
The child who did this drawing has been exploring self portraits throughout the year and he chose to make another one in clay.

As we worked we explored joining techniques and how to make various three dimensional forms and patterns.

When it was complete, he beamed one of his signature smiles at me and said, "I MADE ME IN CLAY!!"

Amy did a similar process with this child who chose to make a leopard-chaun and a pot-of-gold.

With every child we witnessed a few things: first, at some point nearly every child hit their threshold and became somewhat overwhelmed by the many steps involved in actualizing their vision, next, with our continued support and occasional help they were able to move through that frustration and when finished, every child without exception was extremely proud of his or her work.  Now, their eyes light up whenever they see us and yell reminders like "HI! remember my plane I made?", or "I can't wait to see the volcano again!" or just a warm hello and hug.  Scaffolding is important to the process of creating AND it also deepens our relationship with the children, reminding them just how much we value and honor their voices and ideas.

 

asian festival at CGMS

Today we culminated our studay of Asia with an Asian festival...the countries represented were China, India, Thailand, Russia and Japan.

It was a fabulous explosion of discovery.

And a feast for the senses with projects, explorations and foods from each of the countries.

There was coconut mango sticky rice in Thailand, chicken marsala with rice and chai and mango lassi's in India, stir fry in China and smoked salmon with cream cheese on crackers in Russia.

The Japanese cultural center did a wonderful performance with dance and live music, tea ceremonies and kimono instruction.

It was a wonderful day!

watercolor

I challenged the children this week to create a line drawing of their favorite animal from memory.  The results were wonderful.

 This is such a fun time of year, when all the children have had lots of opportunities to explore the media and are now ready to take them a little deeper.  We were using liquid watercolor and experimenting with wet on wet painting and wet on dry.

toddler's in the studio

 Toddler day in the studio and we shifted our focus from making art to having experiences and the tods LOVED it.  The tunnel was a great success...

 as was a dress up area and a light exploration activity....

and of course there are always opportunities to create and explore media.
Another wonderful Friday with the toddlers!

My favorite portrait of me!

Silly Angelina...Silly Charlotte.

I simply love this piece.  LOVE it.

story people

Story people have emerged in the studio after a mother's night when we introduced the process of making clothespin character's.  Hot glue is now an essential element in the studio work time and I spend much of the day carefully (and safely) attaching an array of elements together under the careful direction and insistence of each child.  I am calling these creations "Story People" because every one of them have a story.  Here are a few examples:

 

Pete and the Volcano                 By Grayson W.

Pete lives in Hawaii.  She exploded her volcano in 152 and when the volcano exploded she made a volcano home under water and she lives there forever.  She still explodes her volcano on the biggest island of all of them.  No one knows why or how she explodes her volcano.  I think she maybe shoots out the fire and maybe she gets shot out too and becomes fire before going back to earth.

Mr. Piaong Shrimp     By Harry A.

Mr. Piaong Shrimp was walking along and a bad guy touched him and he became a bad guy too and the bad guy became him.  He hit people every day.  He stays where he can push people.  The police got him but he broke their car.  He smacked them and had to go to jail.  When the good guy touched him again, he turned back and he went out and the bad guy went in and that’s the end.

self portraits

Parker, age 4

All of us, no matter whether we are three years old or one hundred and three, are asking directly or peripherally "Who am I?"  The answer to this question continues to evolve with each passing year and rarely approximates the experience of being alive that we all share.  Watching the children explore this question in the studio has been interesting and thus far I would say it has been the dominant thread of these past months.  Whether the children share with me what they like or where they live or how many people are in their family, they are really exploring the evidence of a "self" visible in a subjective world.

Annika, age 3

Observational drawing is such a great tool to get beyond our ideas and concepts and really just explore what is directly in front of us.  Watching the children strain to see the shape of their nose or the curve of a lip, perhaps for the first time, fills me with a sense of wonder.  Their carefully drawn lines communicate what they have seen on a white sheet of paper while their eyes dart from paper to mirror and back again.  I can not express how tender these self portraits are in my eyes.  I hope that you can glimpse this beauty from the few examples offered here. 

Zoe, age 5

Harry, age 4

Oliver, age 5

Stone Soup and Grandparent's Day

On Tuesday November 20th we celebrated Grandparent's Day at our school.  We spent several weeks prior to the big day talking about Stone Soup.  I told the story of Stone Soup to each of the primary classes and we sent out a sign up sheet asking for our families to bring in a variety of things to add to the soup to reenact the story as a community and to remind each of us that sharing and opening our hearts and cupboards in the joy of giving is what really makes stone soup delicious.



 The children spent several days carefully cutting vegetables into small pieces for the soup.

On Monday evening, we place all the ingredients (plus stones) into two crock pots and left them to cook over night.

By the time we had returned on Tuesday morning the school was filled with the aroma of SOUP.  Grandparent's arrived throughout the day and when they visited the studio they shared a bowl of soup and some amazing soda biscuits made by Mary Untermeyer (THANK YOU MIMM!!).

 As an activity, I had prepared birds and stars in tag board to receive our blessings and gratitude's. 



The grandparents worked with their grand child to write down and illustrate the things for which they feel particularly blessed and then hang their star or bird from the waiting blessing trees.

 It was a lovely day and a wonderful celebration of family and community.

self portraits

Our local art museum is featuring the art of Vincent Van Gogh and many of the teachers have been talking about his life and work in the classrooms and the children have been introduced to a variety of his paintings.  The museum has used Van Gogh's self portrait with a straw hat to publicize the show.  In the studio we began exploring self portraits at the easel.  Self portraits are a wonderful excercise in observational drawing and a great opportunity for me to model and scaffold the process of looking.

When a child self selects this work, he is first introduced to a series of reproductions of portraits by Van Gogh, including a few self portraits and then we spend some time looking at the face in the mirror.  There is only a 6B pencil and a piece of heavy weight paper available initially.  We spend a lot of time looking at the face.  It's shape, where the eyes are, their shape, the number of circles in them, how many lips we have, how many ears, where our nose is and what shape it is. The child draws each part as it is fully seen.  Then we add hair and really notice where our hair is and what it looks like.  Is it only on the top of the head of does it fall across the forehead?  Can you see your ears or does your hair cover them.  Next, we look at the neck, where it is and how we might represent it on our drawing.  Where are the shoulders? etc.  Until all the details are in place.  Then I give them the paint.  The paint is a mixture of shaving cream and liquid water color.  It is applied using a modified palette knife to imitate Van Gogh's impasto technique.  All of this may take up to thirty minutes and the results have been beautiful.

Amy has piggy backed on this exploration and is asking the children if they can express themselves differently through the media of clay.  Her table, covered with a drop cloth, is prepared with several mirrors.  The children are first asked to do a detailed observational drawing of their face and then to interpret what they have seen in clay.

The process is both intriguing and inspiring.  It will be interesting to see where we go from here.  Stay tuned.



Amy discovered this incredible corn plant growing from a wad of clay made by one of older students and kept moist for future use.  Our student had employed an ear of indian corn to make impressions in the earthy mound.  Some of the kernals obviously found their way into the creation and this beatiful gift was the unexpected result.  When we first saw it we both knelt in front of it, awed by the determination of life.  The children have enjoyed viewing this plant as it stretches toward the light.  A few of them intentionally added some kernals to their own clay and now we have a series of similar miracles growing on a shelf in the studio beneath a propped up plastic bag.  A breathtaking reminder of life's tenacity.

rotting pumpkins

What happens when a jack-o-lantern is left in the studio over a long weekend?  It CHANGES.  These changes provided such a wonderful opportunity to investigate and explore the process of decay up close.  I am always surprised by how reticent children have become to getting messy.  So in the pursuit of science, I put out rubber gloves and we spent a day examining a rather mushy pumpkin.

Not only was it slimy and juicy and odoriferous, it was growing a fabulous layer of mold.  The children and I photographed and drew our observations and some theories emerged.  A few are represented here:
"What happened to this pumpkin?"
" got really squished...Maybe a rabbit jumped on it...Someone stomped it." 
We compared two pumpkins, both purchased at the same time but the squishy one was cut into a jack-o-lantern and the other left as a whole pumpkin.  We laid on the whole pumpkin and sat on it...even I (huge as I am) couldn't squash the pumpkin with my weight...so we decided the rabbit theory was a no go. 
Someone suggested "Maybe it's rotten!!...Maybe someone hit it with a hammer...I think it's rotting."
I asked, "Why is it rotting?"  A child replied, "because Halloween is over!" as if that explained everything and then a confident five year old girl stepped up to the pumpkin and announced, "It rotted after you carved it.  They always rot after you carve them", and that was the end of that.

studio catch up

What has been happening in the studio?  A LOT!  And I must apologize for my negligence in sharing these creative wonders with you.  Personally, I have been busy moving into a new home and  let blogging fall by the wayside in the wake of paintbrushes, hammers, brooms and moving trucks.  I have returned to my posting duties with an olive branch of photos to share.

In the wake of Halloween, several children used their ingenuity to create impromptu costumes and paraded around the studio flaunting previously undiscovered elements of their personalities.

A group of boys repurposed some of my moving boxes into an innovative boat, which promptly became a pirate ship with crew captains, mates, cooks and elaborate maps to uncharted territories.  This boat remained a source of creative inspiration for several weeks.  After some group discussion, we decided it was time to move onto other pursuits and so the boat took its maiden voyage to the captain's, Oliver, place of residence.  Oliver is quoted as having replied to the question of where his boat was going to take him with the retort, "It IS a cardboard boat and NOT a real boat".  Alas, moving boxes can take you only so far.

Painting continues to be a popular activity, with water color and tempera being our materials of the moment.



The shadow box has prompted several students to cut black paper into scenes and characters for simple shadow plays and performances.  I have several wonderful video clips but in my efforts to upload them onto the blog I ran into the unfortunate problem of a frozen blog page...if anyone knows how to resolve this issue, please let me know.

Keep checking back I have much more to share.