5/14/12

April Vacation Camp Blog

During April Vacation, Charter Corps partnered with CityArts to run sixteen different classes focused around Earth Day, saving the earth, and using recycled materials to create beautiful art. The students who attended these classes ranged from ages 8 to 14 and were broken into four different groups that circulated to four different classes a day.

Students were given the opportunity to use their creativity to create lots of different art projects. Members of CityArts Americorps team lead students in classes where they created musical instruments, inventions, machine and puppets out of various recycled materials. They were also given the opportunity to create Golden Records based on things important to them and the earth. Students painted the cover and found sounds that represented the sounds of the earth.

Here are some of the activities from the classes run by the Charter Corps members:

Rachel’s class was focused around Dr. Seuss’s book “The Lorax.” This story tells the reader about a greedy Once-ler who destroys the environment by taking all the Truffala trees. The book ends with the Once-ler encouraging the reader to do their part to replant the trees. Students were given the opportunity to paint a banner exploring the world of the Lorax (who spoke for the trees) and in the middle displayed the slogan, “Take care of the trees, PLEASE!! Students also created posters telling people to save the earth and not pollute.  

In Cyntoya’s class students were able to create terrariums and doorstops/paper weights out of rocks they had found in Highlanders backyard.

In Kirsten’s class the students explored different ways to save and help the earth. Students created posters, skits and poems telling people different ways to help the Earth. At the end of the class students put all of their different creations together into a Public Service Announcement. To conclude the whole class students got to plant flowers and vegetables into a newspaper pot.

Nellie and Lissette ran classes where students were able to use recycled newspaper and magazines and reuse them to make something new. Students created coasters and picture frames, bracelets and eyeglass cases out of recycled newspaper, magazines and paper. They also made mosaics on paper plates.

In Nicole’s’ class students were given the opportunity to create piggy banks out of plastic bottles with air dry clay. Students created cats, dogs, people and of course a couple of pigs! The next project that students did was make bottle cap sculptures by gluing bottle caps of all shapes, sizes and colors to canvas. CityArt students use their imagination to create castles, people, and superheroes just to name a few.

During Natalie’s classes students created artwork using natural materials. Students created city ‘mosaics’ using materials found in the backyard of Highlander, made paints with spices and powders, did fruit pressing, and even made their own playdough and naturally dyed it with blueberries. You can find the recipe for the playdough at: http://www.minieco.co.uk/natural-dye-for-homemade-playdough/.

During the class “Tis the Season” run by Leah students learned about the reasons for the seasons as well as appreciating the aesthetic quality of each one. Some of our activities included drawing similar scenes from different seasons and making colorful paper flowers to celebrate spring. The students learned how to write haikus, and several of our seasonal haikus were performed at the final exhibit. The students favorite activity from the class was making the paper flowers. Here are the instructions and some picture examples: http://www.busybeekidscrafts.com/Paper-Flower-Decorations.html Feel free to try this easy project at home.

John ran a class where students were given the opportunity to create posters about saving the earth through screen printing. The students made three different sets of posters. The first run created four large stencil-designed posters to raise environmental awareness, including two for the Keep Elmwood Beautiful cleanup campaign. The other two projects used an emulsion process to transfer the students' drawings to the screens. One run printed informational posters on four endangered animals native to the Rhode Island area while for the last one, students made their own postcard sized tips for greener living.

Jill and Alenoush ran a class where students were given the opportunity to paint endangered animals from Rhode Island and paint a picture of what the Earth should look like and then they attached an overlay of charcoal where students added litter and pollution that people add the make the environment ugly.

Each class was also given the opportunity to go out with one of their teachers participate in the litter clean-up competition. This was a great way for the students to see how they themselves can help the community around them.


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