Post Contributed by Jocelyne Adkins, Program Director/Educator
This week we celebrated Valentine's Day with card making, painting images of sweet treats, and making friendship boxes! On Valentine's Day and the day following, we combined sweetness and science, conducting experiments with candy (this will be introduced in a separate post if you would like to learn more). Below are descriptions of our activities and photos of our cards, paintings and friendship boxes: please have look!
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| Laila |
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Mr. Coppersmith's exemplar
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Ms. Adkins' exemplar
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| Andrew |
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| Heidi with miniature cards, above right |
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Heidi's miniature cards, close-up
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| Andrew |
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| Dallis |
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| Maurice |
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| Dallis with heart shaped envelope, folded |
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| Isaac |
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| Andrew |
On Tuesday, we introduced Wayne Thiebaud as a major artist of the 20th Century and as an exemplar for our project, to create paintings of sweet treats or other favorite food items.
Thiebaud delights the senses with luminous paintings of food & scrumptious desserts. We read select pages from "Delicious, The Life and Art of Wayne Thiebaud" by Susan Goldman Ruben and viewed a number of his absolutely yummy paintings. We also introduced Thiebaud's influences from childhood to adulthood: his grandfather's farm, his cartoonist uncle; his work at a cafe as a dishwasher and cook; cartooning for the army; his love of art history & his experiences as a commercial artist.
We shared with the children that Thiebaud discovered a technique in painting that was truly his own: he outlined
objects with green and blues and he also allowed his preliminary sketch in yellow
paint to show through the more dense layers of paint, creating an unexpected halo effect that he embraced.
Thiebaud was extremely dedicated to his artwork, even when others didn't support his choice of subject matter. Eventually, he had a one-person show at Alan Stone's Gallery in New York and despite earlier criticisms of Thiebaud's work, the show was a huge success and so was Thiebaud!
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| Mikel |
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| Norah |
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| Jalen |
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| Dallis |
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| Anika |
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| Andrew and Cassie |
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| Emily |
On Wednesday, we shared some of the history of Valentine's Day: we read "Valentine Be Mine" by Jacqueline Farmer and learned that the holiday's origins began with St. Valentine (and two other Valentines, also sainted) who was imprisoned for marrying couples, despite an order by Roman Emperor Claudius II, that banned marriages because married men were reluctant to go off to battle. When St. Valentine cured his jailor's daughter of blindness, the jailor's family converted to Christianity and Claudius was furious, taking St. Valentine's life on February 14th. We then discussed how English poet Geoffrey Chaucer's poem celebrating the engagement of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia helped to change St. Valentine's Day from a religious holiday to one of love. We also talked about how the sending of greeting cards became a Valentine's Day tradition and revealed the symbolism linked to the holiday and gift giving. We asked the students to share who they love (family & friends) and to name ways that we show our love and friendship.
Making Friendship Boxes:
We asked each child to write one example of friendship on a small piece of paper. The responses were photocopied and will be distributed to all of the students to place in their friendship boxes. For the project, each child created a heart shaped box (using a re-purposed cereal-bar box) and embellished it with symbols of love and friendship. The completed boxes will be filled with the written examples of friendship, as contributed by the class.
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| Xavier |
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| Emory |
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| Liam |
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| Emerson |
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| Maurice |
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| Cassie |
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| Ben |
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| Andrew |
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| Mikel |
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