10/23
Third Saturday Studio- at NAU and at home
I just participated in the third Saturday kids' art studio. Each week we have had fewer and fewer students in our class. The first Saturday studio involved somewhere between 15 and 20 children. The second week involved about 12. We expected 5 kindergarteners this Saturday, but there were only 3. We will have the 1st and 2nd grade group next Saturday and I will be absolutely shocked if the decline in number continues.
The kindergarten class was fun, loose, and pretty free-form regarding format. When I met Thursday with the two other "art specialists" of my group, Susan suggested that we work on accordion style book construction with the kindergarten group. I put together an example book on Friday night and filled some of the pages Saturday morning. For the pictures inside, I illustrated water collecting into stream form in the Andes and flowing into what eventually becomes that Amazon River. A boy launches a hand-built boat, with a jungle leaf sail on the second page. Because the pages of an accordion book can all be pulled out into a great length, I wanted to use this length as the basis for the contents.
On Saturday morning Pam asked if our group would like to use the sponge stamp alphabet collection she had received just that week. We took these figuring that they might fit into whatever we ended up doing with the kids. Molly grabbed a big sheet of construction paper and cut it to about a ten inch width, so the sheet was about 3' X 10". She then folded the bottom 3 inches upward for the whole length, forming a catch rail at the bottom. She then folded the sheet back and forth into 7 sections so that there were pages that faced each other and each had a folded up pocket. (She continued to add colors to the book with wet tissue paper and glued strips of paper. Her finished product was excellent.) I took some tan paper to the cutter and came back with the rectangles that would fit inside the pockets. The children used the sponge letter stamps with tempera paint to stamp their names inside the books; one letter per page- fitting the example book put together by Susan. The rectangles were filled with crayons, makers and colored pencils with different themes for each child. One child made some that went along with the Just Say No program that she has at school.
The one and only challenge of the morning was the choice made by one child to explore the space under the tables on her hands and knees. I said nothing for a few minutes to just wait and see if she would come back up on her own. Then another child scooted down his chair and said he was going to go see what she found. At that point I knelt down and simply reminded him he was welcome to use our markers while he’s here, but that he couldn’t take them home with his book- and that we were getting toward the end of our time. With that he got back in his chair. The girl under the table asked what I had told him. I told her that I discouraged him from going under the table, as we were getting on toward parent pick-up time. She then came out too.
After they were finished with the books, we provided them with plastic mugs that had paper to color inside and seal back in and also black paper frames that could have the surface scraped off to show rainbow underneath. All the kids really enjoyed these. Susan made an example mug with the frames pasted to the interior paper. One of the children followed this as well.
I registered my 8 year old son for the studio program, and he did attend the first two Saturdays. He could not be persuaded to come this time. It may have been caused by a couple different things. Last Saturday he made a creature box, but the whole thing fell apart as the morning concluded. He felt so discouraged that he threw all the contents of the box away. He brought the box home, but did nothing with his time over the week to re-create his efforts. Also, a 9:30 start time on Saturday is something perfectly reasonable to most kids. For my son to attend however, my role has meant having to get up and get ready on the same time schedule we use for weekdays. He of course didn’t really like this for a Saturday. When I got home from the kindergarten Saturday, Dylan wanted to make an accordion book. A few minutes after he got his started, I ended up with also a 5 yr. old kindergartener and a 7 yr. old 1st grader from the neighborhood. Working with them illustrated to me how poorly my accordian book would have worked for the kindergarteners that morning. I looked back with tremendous thankfulness to the quick thinking of Molly. The example she put together that very morning was perfect in terms of complexity. I watched Luke (5) and Sam (7) have very different experiences. Luke needed much help assembling the book and used each page to repeat the same drawing. Sam was able to do more of the assembly himself and used the length of the book in the development of the story.
What I learned this weekend:
Parenting has given me significant depth in terms of experience with children, however, this Saturday studio experience showed me that I will not be able to use my work with art and my children as the basis of decisions for working with other children. I may have the tendency to work off unrealistic expectations based on the art familiarity I have seen for my own children.
Third Saturday Studio- at NAU and at home
I just participated in the third Saturday kids' art studio. Each week we have had fewer and fewer students in our class. The first Saturday studio involved somewhere between 15 and 20 children. The second week involved about 12. We expected 5 kindergarteners this Saturday, but there were only 3. We will have the 1st and 2nd grade group next Saturday and I will be absolutely shocked if the decline in number continues.
The kindergarten class was fun, loose, and pretty free-form regarding format. When I met Thursday with the two other "art specialists" of my group, Susan suggested that we work on accordion style book construction with the kindergarten group. I put together an example book on Friday night and filled some of the pages Saturday morning. For the pictures inside, I illustrated water collecting into stream form in the Andes and flowing into what eventually becomes that Amazon River. A boy launches a hand-built boat, with a jungle leaf sail on the second page. Because the pages of an accordion book can all be pulled out into a great length, I wanted to use this length as the basis for the contents.
On Saturday morning Pam asked if our group would like to use the sponge stamp alphabet collection she had received just that week. We took these figuring that they might fit into whatever we ended up doing with the kids. Molly grabbed a big sheet of construction paper and cut it to about a ten inch width, so the sheet was about 3' X 10". She then folded the bottom 3 inches upward for the whole length, forming a catch rail at the bottom. She then folded the sheet back and forth into 7 sections so that there were pages that faced each other and each had a folded up pocket. (She continued to add colors to the book with wet tissue paper and glued strips of paper. Her finished product was excellent.) I took some tan paper to the cutter and came back with the rectangles that would fit inside the pockets. The children used the sponge letter stamps with tempera paint to stamp their names inside the books; one letter per page- fitting the example book put together by Susan. The rectangles were filled with crayons, makers and colored pencils with different themes for each child. One child made some that went along with the Just Say No program that she has at school.
The one and only challenge of the morning was the choice made by one child to explore the space under the tables on her hands and knees. I said nothing for a few minutes to just wait and see if she would come back up on her own. Then another child scooted down his chair and said he was going to go see what she found. At that point I knelt down and simply reminded him he was welcome to use our markers while he’s here, but that he couldn’t take them home with his book- and that we were getting toward the end of our time. With that he got back in his chair. The girl under the table asked what I had told him. I told her that I discouraged him from going under the table, as we were getting on toward parent pick-up time. She then came out too.
After they were finished with the books, we provided them with plastic mugs that had paper to color inside and seal back in and also black paper frames that could have the surface scraped off to show rainbow underneath. All the kids really enjoyed these. Susan made an example mug with the frames pasted to the interior paper. One of the children followed this as well.
I registered my 8 year old son for the studio program, and he did attend the first two Saturdays. He could not be persuaded to come this time. It may have been caused by a couple different things. Last Saturday he made a creature box, but the whole thing fell apart as the morning concluded. He felt so discouraged that he threw all the contents of the box away. He brought the box home, but did nothing with his time over the week to re-create his efforts. Also, a 9:30 start time on Saturday is something perfectly reasonable to most kids. For my son to attend however, my role has meant having to get up and get ready on the same time schedule we use for weekdays. He of course didn’t really like this for a Saturday. When I got home from the kindergarten Saturday, Dylan wanted to make an accordion book. A few minutes after he got his started, I ended up with also a 5 yr. old kindergartener and a 7 yr. old 1st grader from the neighborhood. Working with them illustrated to me how poorly my accordian book would have worked for the kindergarteners that morning. I looked back with tremendous thankfulness to the quick thinking of Molly. The example she put together that very morning was perfect in terms of complexity. I watched Luke (5) and Sam (7) have very different experiences. Luke needed much help assembling the book and used each page to repeat the same drawing. Sam was able to do more of the assembly himself and used the length of the book in the development of the story.
What I learned this weekend:
Parenting has given me significant depth in terms of experience with children, however, this Saturday studio experience showed me that I will not be able to use my work with art and my children as the basis of decisions for working with other children. I may have the tendency to work off unrealistic expectations based on the art familiarity I have seen for my own children.
posted by Elii | 10:27 AM
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