Session 5- Day 4

The special project this week finds every class creating a map of the Children's Garden and each child sculpting an art treasure out of clay to bury into the ground. The classes will be swapping their treasure maps with another class in hopes of finding their buried treasure. In the end, each child will have a treasure to take home.

 

Today, the Orange Group did Paper Pulp Pedaling using a blender and our bike powered paper grinder. This project uses only recycled parts and shredded paper, along with no electricity!

The shredded paper is blended with water and layered out in the sun on a window screen. Once the new sheets of paper are dried and hardened, they will make art out of the paper they created. 

Tree, the head teacher of the Yellow Group, is the man behind building the bicycle blender. By using old bicycle parts and a blender, he put together the man-powered blender shown below.

 

The Orange Group also learned how to make beautiful flowers out of colored tissue paper and pipe cleaner.

This week, the Blue Group molded pumpkin pots in the Ceramics Room and will be glazing them next week. Below shows the before and after process.

Today, they began molding Aztec calendars (or sun stones) inspired by the two Sandy brought in from her trip to Spain. They started by rolling out the clay with a rolling pin. To obtain the correct width, the clay is placed between two rulers so when the clay is rolled out the rolling pin will not flatten the clay any thinner than the thickness of a ruler. Then they traced a circle into the clay, cut it out and used the scraps for the detailing. Next week, after the clay goes through the firing process, they will do the last step of the project by glazing the stones to give a old, rustic finish.

The children's mosaics catching the light in the trees in the Children's Garden. If you would like to see the process, check out Session Four's blog.