Mystery Box

Josephine liberally gluing her home together, made of popsicle sticks.  Kids love overusing goopy, sticky glue.

Here's Jonathan putting the final touches on his home.  That blurry right arm means he is gluing with a quickness!

... and look how proud he is!

Here's Jonathan, Emily, Brandon, Sarah, Leah, and Josephine hard at work developing their masterpieces.

... and here they are moving onto a drawing exercise.

... and doing research on different animals.

...and trying to remember what they just saw by visualizing.

These structures are built by Emily, Jonathan, Josephine, Leah, Sarah, and Brandon. The first mystery box was filled with 1,000 popsicle sticks, some shapes, and glues.

They are working on the mystery box #2-- papier-mâché
It was a bit dusty from the fine paper powders so we used zipper bags to mix with water.

Tada! Here we have trees an bushes...

all in a row...

Some are tall...

Some are round...

Some are prickly...

...while trees and bushes are drying,  we visit the Indian Museum to see how people build their stuff a long time ago.
This is a Adobe house--they are built like a rock!

Everyone knew what this was--Teepee!

The museum had a good library collection for kids.

This was to see which type of boat will sink or float and why.

Can you guess why they look so happy? It was the morning of our field trip day!

Getting on the 12 person van one by one...

Exterior at the Indian American Museum--it was 96 degrees hot!

...upon arrival, they listened to the rules.

...and the game begins.

...they got to weave a giant basket just like Native Americans.

...and they learned about their vegetables.

...and listened to the sound of Native American birds.

...and got to make a Native American designed star.

...also had some fun walking back to the van going to a restaurant.

and ate a healthy salad lunch.

...a burger and some tacos...

...and Pizza too!

I don't know if Indian Americans had cotton candies... but we did!

...came back at Hannah's Art School and debriefed.

The #3 mystery box was paints.

They all painted the  papier-mâché trees and bushes

Look at all the beautifully colored trees and bushes!

...after the house was built, they started to decorate the things around the house...such as a snake.

...a nice lady sitting in the house.

...and she needed a pet horse, of course.

Do you see a town beginning to form?

This house is unique and cool!

There's a nice lady in this house too...and she has a pet snail.

This one has a snail as a house top.

I see a town...

A beautiful one that is...

You may see imperfections...

...but I see struggles...problems...and their overcoming struggles, and their solving problems.

One at a time...

Making it better and better...

Building it together...

Nicely, neatly...

Creatively...

Confidently...

That's how we built this beautiful town together...

Everyone's anxiously waiting for parents to arrive to present their final piece. Art in general is visual, of course, but an important component of art is in the artist's ability to describe and present. We make sure our aspiring artists learn, rehearse, and present their piece.

Great job, everyone!!!