Yesterday we began classes for our Kindergarten students at the Clear Spring School. Our "Rainbow Group" made tops and the small hand crank drills mounted in vises allow the students to decorate them with colored pencils. In addition to the Rainbow Group class in which each student made two tops ("Do we get to keep them? They asked) the outdoors study science class made bat bats. Since my link between my blog and facebook will only load one photo or video, I've posted additional photos to my instagram account which you can find under the user name douglasstowe. To make the bat bats, magic wands through which the blessings of bats may be conferred, the kids cut out pictures of bats, glued them onto wood, and then cut them out with scroll saws before adding a stick and painting the back sides.
Path to Learning Podcast has presented an excellent interview with ballet artist and choreographer Lincoln Jones describing his use of the Froebel Blocks and gifts to stimulate his own creative path. Ballet with Blocks. As I was listening to him describing the use of the blocks to expand his own understanding of design and hearing him tell of slowing down motions to develop the greatest meaning, I learned to view our own experiment with supersized Froebel blocks as a form of ballet. If you watch the motions of the student coordinating the use of his hands to crank with one and pencil with the other you see building blocks being formed in the child's body mind. As we watch children designing collaboratively with the big blocks on the playground, we see the same thing. The link to the Lincoln Jones Path to Learning podcast should be of interest to anyone interested in design.
https://www.froebelusa.com/podcasts/the-path-to-learning-podcast/episodes/2147570216
In my own shop I'm doing the usual, making boxes.
Make, fix and create...
No comments:
Post a Comment