Chelsea Boys and Girls Club Day 2

We had a great time today with a few bookmakers as welcome additions! In attendance were Maria Theresa, Emily, Bob, Mary and Fernanda

We started with warm ups and some name fun then Bob and Mary introduced the physical books the students would be making. The girls loved them, and spent quite a bit of time folding , looking , twisting and touching, which was wonderful to watch.

We then worked on metaphor--they understood it well so we worked off of the sun from All Summer in A Day. They had time to write "In my life the sun is ____" and then explain. The answers were beautiful, some of my favorites were "The sun is my mind" " the sun is my imagination" the sun is the love of my family" really lovely.

After sharing we worked with rain. For this part we generated images for the books, their assignment was to use construction paper and make shapes that meant "rain" keeping in mind that our discussion Tuesday was that there are no "wrong" interpretations. They cut and crumpled, folded and drew. Some favorites were a "lollypop of sadness" "ocean for my grandfather" and "diamonds". These two exercises gave us a bunch of material for their books.

We then worked with the concepts of Earth and Venus and they explored these concepts as they related to familiar and different. We used bodies and then drew (two big pieces of paper on either side of the room, one for drawing on Earth and one on Venus). Bob pointed out the striking difference in the two (Earth was filled with houses and fairly recognizable shapes, while Venus was a mixture of lines and squiggles and scrapes--some were drawn with their feet).

To finish the day we worked a bit with Boal's Image theatre and sculpted exploring concepts they felt in the story through their bodies. This got them out of language and into the world of the physical (and was a welcome silent activity). We then followed it with a lively discussion about moments when language fails and how powerful bodies and non-verbals can be.

Overall I'd say it was a success, it was wonderful to have so may collaborators, and the product will definitely be great.

Emily