Week 2-September 11-17

 This week was the first week of the regular schedule of activities. Monday, I work with the two youngest groups. Kindergarten through second grade are in the art room on Mondays. On Wednesday, fifth and sixth grade students are in the art room. Thursday, seventh and eighth grade students are in one group, and the high school students are in another. Since the students I am working with are older as the week progresses, so does the difficulty of the project.

The focus for the week was awareness and interaction with the environment. Our focus was on a simple way they can help out the birds, so we made bird feeders. The younger students made the versions shown in the photographs. They colored the bird feeders with markers and they hang off a post or tree branch by the strings. 

 Here are photos of one of the projects, shown from the top and the side. The square is where the bird feed is placed and the one popsicle stick is a perch for the bird. The high school students attached triangle-shaped roofs to them as well.

The students were given popsicle sticks and told how to line them up. Alexis and I put hot glue down on the popsicle sticks and they were shown how to carefully press the second popsicle stick on top without getting burned by the glue. We used low temperature glue guns so that the glue wouldn't hurt them if it got on them, but we still wanted to teach the safety precautions they should keep in mind when working with the hot glue. The middle and high school students were allowed to put the glue on themselves under our supervision. 

The high school students were able to cooperate and get the base of the birdfeeders built with plenty of time to spare, so we let them have the instructions to construct the little roof to go on top. We explained that the roof helped to keep the rain off the bird while they were eating. Only a few actually finished the roof, but they had fun giving it a try.

Looking back, I now realize that using hot glue was not the best decision. It took a lot of time putting glue on each student's project, and it kept the instructors glued to the guns, with any need to step away from the glue gun holding up the class and slowing down the process. Due to the students only getting one day in art a week, there is not much flexibility for projects continuing on into the next class. I think that using tape for the younger students would have been better for us instructors and less frustrating for the students. They would have been able to spend more time building and decorating their bird feeders and less time waiting for glue. I will keep this in mind moving forward.