Urban Arts -4 hours.
Today at Urban Arts we looked at more work by Ifrah Mansour. For our project today the kids worked with found materials to create an aqal inspired by Ifrah. We watched a video that was made about a year ago when Ifrah had a group of Musli refugees come together. This group included elders, children, and teenagers to share their wisdom and contribute to building a traditional Somali house. Ifrah and her group used an assortment of unconventional materials, we used that to influence what the children would use. They used a combination of paper bags, straws, string, plastic lids, and other sorts of materials they could find in the classroom. The kids enjoyed it, making something that was completely their own with the materials they want. One student even built a multilevel aqal using q-tips and cut straws. Another student used straws stuck in a plastic lid for make the structure and burlap to cover the outside. We tried to decorate it with beads but it was a little challenging to get the strong to stay and get it through. Eventually the student used a fun piece of fabric to cover the outside.
Free Arts- 2 hours
Today at Free Arts one of our team members was gone, out sick from this cold weather. But in light we had 3 new members on their first day. Since we had new members in our teaching group and new friends in the class we had a long introduction. We went around with our names and something that starts with the first let of our name. The kids had a lot of fun with it, many of them told us they like spaghetti and meatballs. For our second art project we made paper wind chimes with the kids that reflected seasons. We started out with a big sheet of paper and color the four seasons to our desired image. We had some snowy sprigs, sandy summers, and windy autumns. After we finished coloring we attached each side and hung streamers from the bottom. The kids love picking the streamers and messing around with them, poka dots, bright greens, and blues! Some kids had time to make two while others focused on the first one. Once it was time to clean up we did a quick shake it out with freeze dance. On the way out we said goodbye with high fives and fist bumps.