*** In January, a small, brightly painted room at the West Broad Street YMCA was given to us so that we could create an art studio. It takes time and collaboration between students and teachers to create a space in which we all feel comfortable making, talking and thinking. We are using ideas from the Reggio Emilia early education philosophy to guide us in setting up this studio and in our interactions with the children. (for more information about Reggio see links on the side bar!)
Initially, the plan for LOOP IT UP was to follow the Warm Up America course; teaching everyone to knit or crochet and creating a collaborative patchwork blanket. After we met the kids we decided to step back for a while and focus more generally, on learning stitches and creating samples. Some of the kids caught on right away and were really into the process. Others, found even this a tedious start. For these kids, often the younger ones, we needed to come up with an alternative way to get them engaged and feel a part of the studio.
I have been reading a wonderful book,
Beautiful Stuff, by Cathy Weisman Topal and Lella Gandini. The book discusses learning with found materials and setting up an accessible studio for children. Through my reading and watching the kids, I began to think that starting a program like LOOP IT UP with projects that demand so much long term focus might be a little overwhelming. With this in mind, we decided to just ease into things and let the kids get comfortable with us, with making and with the studio environment which we're building. The introduction from
Beautiful Stuff says "The goal is to allow children to become fluent with materials-- as if materials were a language."
We have many shelves in the studio. They are lined with containers of materials: yarn, ribbon, sparkly trims, beads, buttons, plastic rings, bottle tops, sequins, paper and then some. We also have empty containers and the kids are encouraged to collect whatever strikes their fancy to work with.
Here is some work from the first few weeks!
Tony's necklace. "it's all cranberries and cherries. I switched them to make a pattern."
These next two are from the little guys at the Boys and Girls club.
collecting, sorting and composing.
Although invited to explore the materials shelf, Jaylen kept picking white paper and markers. With his paper and markers, he drew one of two compositions. Again and again and again.
the first is the small colored forms, which he explained, "are the family. there are a lot of members. different colors are different members that are different years old."
The second is the gray structure in the upper right corner. I asked him about it and he said, "just a what is is... a design, yeah a design. but I think they live in it."
For the first week and a half Jaylen made piles of these drawings. And then, quite suddenly he found the glue...
if you look closely, you can see that he glued all these letters on top of one of his family drawings.
