“Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” ~ Anatole France
April 3, 2024
Dear Families and Friends,
Third graders sprang into action in South School’s art room on Tuesday. Positioned next to their partner, spread out on the floor, and at tables, they were filled with ideas. The materials worked for them. All of a sudden we saw trees, rain drops, and deserts appear. Their stories grew and took new forms.
Responding to questions, “Where are your two animals? What season and time of day is it? What was happening before your two creatures got together? How are you helping your partner or helping someone else together?” kids put their heads together. New perspectives brought new ways of thinking and designing. They added detail to their collagraph plates, cutting bits of yoga mats into small chunks and adding pieces of bumpy board and clothesline to represent more images of nature.
Susan led a color-filled printing process with one child at a time. Choosing two hues and overlapping them, they saw a third color appear at the intersection. This paper, with its colorful stripe, will serve as the background for their printed collagraph.
Every Leaps’ class involves multiple disciplines and ways for learners to express themselves. Having heard the story of Crabtree,* a man who’d accumulated an enormous amount of “stuff” and needed to categorize them so he could find what he was looking for, kids took a stab at categorizing all the animals in third graders’ stories. We gave them a list. And they came up with ways to classify them. Here are some of their categories. Poison, wings, water and fur. Fur, fly, fast, and big. Water, able to fly, type of cat, and ground. Fast, strong, and smart. We are impressed with the novelty of their ideas!
They’ll be taking their ideas to the next level in the coming days as authors and printmakers. We can’t wait to read their stories and see their prints.
Thrilled with young artists’ingenuity, and enthusiasm.
Nancy, Susan, Willoughby, Dee, and Jocelyn
*I am proud to say that, Illustrator, artist, and author, of Crabtree, Tucker Nichols, was one of my first grade students when I was a teacher at Charles River School in Dover, Massachusetts. His work has been featured at the Drawing Center in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, Den Frie Museum in Copenhagen, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. ~ Nancy Harris Frohlich
LEAPS of IMAGINATION 