February 8, 2019

Fashion Design, Printing, Building, and other Creating

It was a busy afternoon for the KW children. From the start the children were ready to engage with one another and the multiple materials offered as well as others they suggested. Some of the children were quick to finish lunch and moved onto some of their own projects. Will created Rodarte-inspired fashion with wire, paper, and foil.

Hugh, Lily, and Tommy made 'walkie talkies'. Having noticed the walkie talkies  come up a few times now in KW, we asked the children to tell us more. Tommy said they were making them, 

"So we can talk to each other when we're not at school." 

Paint Workshop: Bubble Printing!

Continuing from yesterday's bubble printing, we took out our previous mixed paints to start mixing our bubble printing concoctions. We wondered if we needed any more colors. Lily decided to mix a blue green and Hugh chose orange. The children worked together to mix these additional colors. Then it was time to mix in water and dish soap. The children had to come up with the right combination of ingredients to get the bubbles to work properly. Soon they were blowing bubble mountains and creating some interesting layers of bubble prints. As many of the children had already printed in their hand-bound art books yesterday, today the choice was mainly to print on larger pieces of paper. There were many giggles and paint splatters! 

Book Art and Building

After bubble printing, the children moved on to work in their art books.

Then Sam, Tommy, Lily, and Hugh worked on building inspired by a photo of the Capitol Building we projected onto the shadow screen. Here's some of what they said while working:

Sam - "My idea is to build a tall building!
Lily - "Let's get building."
Hugh - "There's going to be people in the town."
Lily - "Don't you think we need that statue?" (Pointing to the statue in the photo.) 
Lily - (Exploring various materials to build a stature with a duck) "A duck statue."
Hugh - (With wood human figures,) "These can be human statues."
Tommy - (With other wood figures,) "These can be grown-ups."
Sam - "I'm working. I'm using this (piece of foam) as cement." (Holding up a diamond-shaped block) "Do we need a diamond in the city?"
Hugh - "I guess so, sure!"

The children used a lot of negotiation and  problem-solving as they worked and as they figured out how to place their structures in order to cause shadows to appear on the screen. 

Meanwhile, Will continued to work in his book. He asked for help with the writing. He wrote, "LC YOU CANNOT READ THIS BOOK." As he wrote he said, "Everyone is building except me. That's great because I need privacy (to work in his secret book.)" He explained, "I wrote 'LC' for my sister because I can't spell her name."

Fairy Family

Outside, the Fairy Family was at it again preparing cake for the teenage son's (Tommy) birthday and Grandfather (Will) was distracting hime while Mom (Lily) and Dad (Hugh) were preparing for the party. The children made beds using large wooden blocks and set up areas of the outdoor classroom as the rooms in their house. The children also spent some time watching Victor work on rebuilding our wooden boat.