Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Reflections

It's hard to believe but there's only seven days of Kids' Workshop left!   This means we are spending our time reflecting on our work and putting the finishing touches on some of our creations.   Caleb and Joslin took time to share their art journal work.  They noticed that they both included pages with letters on them.  Jossie was impressed that Caleb had done some sewing in his book. 
Last week during Sam's journal conference, the idea of being an artist came up.  We followed up on this question today, asking the children if their experience with materials means that they are artists.  Here are some of their responses:
   Maisie - I would say that I'm not an artist, but I am an illustrator of books.
   Elena -  I'm not an artist, but I like drawing pictures.
   Question - What is an artist?
   Elena - Someone who paints.
   Several children - And draws.
   Maisie - An artist is someone who really likes to paint and draw.   
Children seemed very focused on art being painting and drawing.   We asked Will to share what he thought about earlier, as he worked with watercolors outside:
   Will - In my watercolor, there was a whole pile of colors and that looked like my wire sculpture.  They're both art.  

There was also time for journal work this afternoon.  Will used stencils and Tommy worked with glue.  Having been inspired by Caleb, Jossie took the time to sew in her journal.  Maisie worked on a page that she titled "Joyful Bubbles."

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Construction Challenge

If it's Tuesday, there's probably a construction challenge!   Today's challenge was to take inspiration from the city drawings done (primarily) by Hugh and Tommy and build a city.  Hugh initially worried that they couldn't build exactly what they had drawn.  However, he quickly understood that almost any city building would work and got busy building roads.  Cate and Tegan made sure to include houses for their animals... in fact their animals were neighbors.  Once again, children relied on communication, negotiation, and collaboration to make their city.

Finishing Touches

We have been sewing on clay slabs for a couple of weeks now, and many children chose to finish theirs today!  It was also great to look back over some early sewing work and see if there was more to do on this projects.  Every child is looking forward to bringing his or her portfolio bag home next Friday!