Elm Tree 2016 Day Five

Hi Again, Elm Tree Fams! 

To begin, we'd like to thank you for the wonderful week. We couldn't have asked for a kinder, more easy-going, creative group of Elmsters! All week, we kept hearing chimes of, "Everyone here is friends!" And we felt that way too! 

This morning, the kids had one thing on their minds: fairy houses! That and the stag beetle Hector found on the way to camp. Before hide-and-seek, we checked on the houses. At first we thought that fairies had come over night to take their houses away, but eventually we found them! We also got the chance to carefully examine Hector's beetle.  

Then it was off to our daily rounds of hide-and-seek!

After hide-and-seek, we walked to the Endale Arch to eat snack and write some poems! To get us in the mood, we read the book The Big Box by Toni Morrison. In this book, a bunch of kids have to live in a box due to general misbehavior. They break out eventually, but all Elm Tree Crew agreed that this kind of punishment is not cool. They book earned two thumbs up all around anyhow. I guess you can't go wrong with Toni Morrison! 

Since it was the last day of camp, we decided to write about memories! We read some poems written by other students in New York. All of these poems begin with the lines, "I remember," and contain a series of memories. After discussing the meaning of the word remember, we wrote our own! We didn't get a chance to take pictures of Elm Tree work today, but feel free to comment with a picture of your child's poem! 

After writing, we headed to the tunnel for some sidewalk chalk fun. The objective today seemed to be to flatten as much chalk as possible by filling in the hexagons on the sidewalk.

We wanted to walk to the museum before it heated up, so we headed out after our time in the tunnel. A lot of exhibitions were closed yesterday due to air conditioning problems, but luckily the exhibition we wanted to see, Disguise: Masks and Global African Art was open! This exhibition connects the work of twenty five contemporary artists with historical African masquerade. Before entering, we read the introductory sign and found out that in many cultures, putting on a mask is thought of as transformative and that the wearer actually becomes someone or something new. 

The exhibition consisted of traditional and non-traditional masks, photographs, video art, and installation art. The kids sat entranced in front of one piece of video art by Saya Woolfalk for about ten minutes. Find a spoken poem about the piece transcribed below! 

Life Products by ChimaTEK

Saya Woolfalk

With Rachel Lears

(Poem by Elm Tree 2016)

Two women are changing into colors

The women are different

The women are the same

It looks like bacon getting cooked with lots of sauce

She's feeling a little scared because she’s trying something that might make her invisible

She’s in her own mind

She’s in a different box

I would help them

They are trying to get more colorful

They can reach into colors

She’s discovering another place that is clean and magical

I see colors on her from her mouth

Her mouth is yellow

She's in her mind again

Her mind is a volcano

The sky is moving down, up, and back

Here are some more pictures of us exploring the exhibition!

The kids liked the exhibition so much, we stayed at the museum until noon! Then it was definitely time for lunch, so we walked over to Mount Prospect park and hunkered down in the shade. As we ate, Sally read us the book Life Doesn't Frighten Me At All by Maya Angelou and with illustrations by Jean Michel Basquiat. Then we talked about the things that do and don't frighten us. Here's the poem we wrote about it!

I’m Not Scared

Elm Tree 2016

I'm not scared of panthers

I'm not scared of sneaky cats

I'm not scared of big hungry wolves

I'm not scared of Mona

I'm not scared of butterflies

I'm not scared of ghosts

I'm not scared of flying tomatoes

I'm not scared of walking skeletons

I'm not scared of a canoe in a hurricane

I'm not scared of the cat that scratches me

I'm not scared of peanuts in a bag

I'm not scared of Star Wars

I'm not scared of no noggin

I'm not scared of the big marshmallow man on Halloween because I can bite into him and say yum

I'm not scared of owls in a cloud who say whooooo

After lunch we played a couple rounds of "come with me little fishies" and threw a ball around while Sally and Molly set up our project for the day--making masks!

Here's the smorgasbord of mask fixin's!

And here's what it looked like after we got started:

What a fun project!

We knew we had to play some more, so after finishing our masks, we headed to the playground. We were shocked that no one wanted to run through the sprinklers and also by the amount of energy your children have when it feels like it's 95 degrees out! Dang! 

Two water breaks and lots of chasing later, we headed back to the Grand Army Plaza to say goodbye. What a great week it's been! We can't wait to see everyone again next summer, and please keep in touch over the year! Elm Tree 2016 Forever!!!

<3,

Sally & Molly

   

Elm Tree 2016 Day Four: Fairy Houses and the Brooklyn Museum

Hiya Elm Tree Fams! 

We can't believe the week is already almost over! We had a sweet day today. As usual, we began with a bit of hide and seek. Then we switched up our schedule and read two books while eating snack, Come to the Fairie's Ball by Jane Yolen and  The Rainbow Goblins by Ul de Rico. We also wrote two collaborative stories, transcribed below. 


The Flower Blew Apart

Fortunately, the two fairies found each other in the middle of a flower petal.
Unfortunately, there was wind, and it blew the flower petal apart.
Fortunately, the wind stopped blowing.
Unfortunately, the flower fell anyway.
Fortunately, a dragon came down and ate them!
Unfortunately, the dragon was not used to eating fairies and flowers and he got a stomach ache. 
Fortunately, this meant that he vomited up our good fairy friends.
Unfortunately, they were very, very messy.
Fortunately, the petals came out too, and they were clean, so they got to dry themselves off.
Unfortunately, the petals broke. 
Fortunately, the dragon broke into pieces.
Unfortunately, the pieces were to small to put back together.
Fortunately, we could use the pieces of the dragon to build fairy houses.
Unfortunately, they were not sticky.
Fortunately, they had some glue.
Unfortunately, they tested the house, and the glue was not dry yet.
Fortunately, the glue still stuck.
Unfortunately, the house still broke when it was sticky.
Fortunately, the fairies didn't care that their house was broken, they just lived under the pieces of the house. 

Bees and Squirrels and the Heavens

Once upon a time, there lived a bee who cooked, but he over salted the cat, so the cat got messy and salty and went up the wall, and the heavens broke open, and the three squirrels, they ate grass and got sick and then got better because medicine helped them live longer. A tree went up there into the broken heavens. 

We read these magical books and told these magical stories to prepare ourselves for our first activity, building Fairy Houses! After talking about what kinds of things fairies and goblins would build their houses out of, we went back into the wooded area and collected leaves, sticks, rocks, and other natural items. Sally brought some fairy house material from Tucson, so after we picked out our natural treasure, we looked through that and picked out shiny things, seashells, flowers, and smooth rocks to help us build! 

Then the fun began! We grabbed our loot bags and headed back into the woods to start building! We teamed up and worked on three houses all nearby each other. Then we decided to make paths between them to create a magical village. 

We were delighted to see how hard they worked on these houses, adding detail after detail, and using them for dramatic play upon completion. They could have kept playing for hours, but we decided it was time for them to write about their creations! So, back to the blanket we headed for some poetry and drawing. As we worked, several park visitors stopped to take pictures of our houses! We took this as a huge compliment and called out our thanks as they passed us. See our work below!

Ubalo's Fairy House

Hector's Fairy House

Lyla's Fairy House

 Miriam's Fairy House

Esmee's Fairy House

We shared our fairy house stories, packed up, and headed to Mount Prospect Park for lunch and play time before the museum. We also finished reading My Father's Dragon! We'll start on the next book, Dragons of Blueland, tomorrow. 

When we finished playing, we put on our field trip glasses and headed toward the Brooklyn Museum. All the kids are excited to take their sunglasses home tomorrow at the end of camp! They all have a favorite pair, and everyday when we get them out, they ask, "Can we take them home today?" It's hard to say no, and tomorrow we won't have to! 

With our shades on, we walked to the museum. In the lobby, Tom Sach's boombox retrospective is on display, and we had a hard time keeping our bodies still with the music blasting out of them. We made our way up to the fifth floor to check out Stephen Powers's Exhibition, Coney Island is Still a Dreamland (to a seagull) and the other American art on display there. 

Here we are in front of a Powers's piece! 

When we talk about art with children, we ask them three simple questions: 1) What is happening in this piece? 2) What do you see that makes you say that? and 3) What more can you find? These questions always spark interesting conversation and can even result in poetry! 

The piece above is called Replica of a Winged Figure from the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial. Curious about the woman in the piece and what she's doing, the kids sat in front of it for a few minutes discussing all the possibilities, which resulted in the poem below: 

Replica of a Winged Figure from the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial

by Elm Tree 2016

It looks like someone going through a tunnel

It looks like a woman in a coffin

She has a blanket

She’s wearing a long dress made of pajamas

The dress feels like coral

It feels like my aunt’s baby’s cheek

It feels like an eyelash

She is moving fast because she’s using her hands to crawl

She is suffering because she goes squirming around

She looks like an angel going through a tunnel

It is dark and dangerous because there's a rhinp sleeping somewhere in the tunnel

She is carrying plants and leaves

She is underwater because I see the waves

She is made of cartilage and skin

Inside her is veins and blood

And her heart and her blood

We also looked at a piece of abstract art and talked about how art can convey meaning through color and shape and how different people can see different things inside a piece of art, walking away with totally different meanings.

After discussing the piece above, we went back down to the lobby to draw our own pieces of abstract art. We asked the Elm Tree Crew to ignore meaning while drawing and just see what they can make thinking only about color, shape, and lines. When they all had filled up as much of their page as possible, we asked them what they could see inside the picture, what the shapes and colors meant to them. Check out the results below!

Ubalo's Art

Esmee's Art

Lyla's Art

Miriam's Art

The Museum is so big and fun, we plan on going back tomorrow to check out some more of the exhibitions! Can't wait to see everyone for our final day of Elm Tree 2016!!!

<3,

Sally & Molly