Today was supposed to be Poetry for Prizes, and I was going to teach the boys "Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson in honor of International Women's Day, but we also had to test another product for MoMA and ran out of time on the poem. I'm gonna try and get it tonight, though.
But the product we tested was pretty fun! It was more of a drawing exercise all about camouflage. We read about how animals use it in nature, how it was developed for the military, and about how artists like Andy Warhol appropriated it and used it to make cool patterns. Then the kids picked environments to make camouflage for...
Zephyr picked autumn leaves, Lyric picked the beach
...and then they used colored pencils to make their own camouflage patterns.
Zephyr showing the eight year old focus
Lyric showing the five year old focus (two pencils at once!)
They loved "making blobs" and filling them in. Lyric didn't quite get the abstraction of camouflage and wanted to make his picture a representative beach scene, but Zephyr seemed to get it, and they both enjoyed the drawing and coloring.
Lyric's finished product. Note him camouflaged within the picture!
Zephyr's finished product. Not too shabby!
All in all, a pretty fun time! Hopefully we'll get the poem later, or so a little thing with feathers told me.
EDIT: Got the poetry for prizes in!