Monday, March 26, 2012

Recycle

This week our [re] word was [Re]cycle. The students made sculptures inspired by the artist Dale Chihuly out of recycled plastic bottles. This week we continued with the “center” concept, as they moved freely between plastic bottle manipulation stations: melting (using hair dryers and a toaster oven), cutting, and painting. Students used these stations to manipulate the bottles using the idea of upcycling.

The introduction was watching two videos first a water bottle recycle organization that creates sculptures with just water bottles and the second was a Dale Chihuly video. The students were extremely into both videos even though we had doubts if they would stay interested in both. Some students liked the water bottle video more then the Dale and vise versa. This led to a really great discussion about both topics because students were interested in both. Also, one of the students Rachel talked about how she is actually making blown glass bowls for arts fest with her mom and sister. Rachel doesn't usually talk so we were very excited to here from her.

The demo Larissa and I decided went a little long. We noticed that the kids lost interest after the first few minutes or didn't really pay attention at all. This could be because we had a long introduction or because many of them couldn't see the demo.  We decided that we will not do as long of a demo in the next weeks again and/or do a long introduction.


The students really enjoyed working on the manipulation of the water bottles. They always surprise us with their artistic talents. Many of them came up with new ways that we did not have examples of to manipulate their bottles. For instance, Bram started poring the neon paint into the water bottles and shook up different colors to get almost a tie die effect. This was not an example but a very interesting way to use the paint that he came up with all on his own.

One of the main issues we had during class was that one of the kids David gets really worked up over using hazardous materials, such as hot glue guns and today he had a huge problem with the melting of the water bottles. He first refused to melt his bottles, which was fine and we told him he could manipulate them in other ways and then he decided that he would not participate in the project all together because it could be possibly toxic. I gave him a face mask to where inside the class room no where near the melting area outside and he finished two bottles and said he would not do anymore. I told him that if he didn't want to do anymore bottles then that was fine but I showed him the images we had of the final products on the wall and said I want you to know that when we piece them all together that you will only have two bottles to contribute and I don't want to see you upset when everyone else has many more in the sculptures. He said that he wouldn't be upset so we let him sketch for the remainder of the time.

Other then Davids little meltdown "literally" the class went smoothly. Except for we decided that we needed to limit the painting center for next week to only puff paint, which was their favorite to use, because it was extremely messy and created a lot of chaos and was a lot to clean up.

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