Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Workshop Projections

As half of the Wednesday group is not in our Tuesday group, we again began our time together discussing January's projections with the children and introducing our next workshop topic: book-binding! Jessica shared her hardbound art journals and the children looked through them. Sam especially expressed interest in the books bound with a sewing machine. We're all looking forward to hopefully trying those out next week. We also briefly discussed the upcoming beading workshop and our field trip to see the Rodarte exhibit!

​Bead-Making and Book-Binding

In order to prepare for our upcoming beading workshop, the children made both paper and clay beads today. While they molded the clay beads, some of the children named the types they were making such as "snake," "ball," "door," and "tea pot." Some of these names showed the children's understanding with various clay techniques while others were either a literal representation or fun expression of creativity. We began dreaming up the different types of beads we could make. 

At the book-binding table, children learned some basic hand-binding skills: folding papers in half and then stacking them together to create a signature, using a bone folder to get a crisp fold, making holes through the crease of the signatures with an awl, and threading through the holes to bind the pages into a book. Elena and Tegan worked in the books they had made yesterday including stitching a cover onto their books. Louise and Grace worked on their books as well once they had finished binding them together. Tegan wanted to make a second book and, while waiting for her thread color of choice, figured out how to thread a needle! She even set up some extra needles for future sewing.

All in all, we had a wonderful afternoon of creating together, including talks of winter break and the brief spotting of a snow!!