Children look for new ways of seeing and doing at Indy Art Lab summer learning experience.

If I could quote my friend and colleague Clark Fralick, two of the most important hallmarks of children's learning experience is exploration and authenticity. I am satisfied that the children were in control of their learning and we made wonderful discoveries about our capacities as creative thinkers and learners. We made some pretty good art too!
At Stringtown Park, despite 105 degree temperatures, we had a wonderful experience with approximately ten campers. My sincerest thanks goes to Ms. Cinthya Perez of the Stringtown Park Program. Her children are so lucky to have her as their camp counselor! More on our two week Indy Art Lab Summer Learning experiences later!

Learning Should be a Fascinating Adventure!

We looked at plant materials up close in the microscope.

Harness the Forces of Gravity!

We went to the marble run center at Stringtown Park.

We thought about how we could control the marbles with our materials.

We built structures to support our marble run tracks.

We dropped the marbles onto the tracks and watched gravity take over.

Sometimes we lost control of our marbles.

We had to make adjustments to keep the marbles on the tracks.

We Try New Ways of Making Art

We made stencil prints.

We made jewelry and friendship bracelets.

We told stories through our art.

Indy Art Lab's First Week

We completed our first week of choice based art learning activities at Haughville Park with the children of Ms. Francetta Peterson's Summer Supervised Play Learning Camp. We had a blast! 

We had all kinds of learning activities going on at Haughville Park! First their are the 2-D artists: illustrators, designers and painters, experimental drawing artists, geometric radial design artists, splatter painters, landscape artists, abstractionists, poets and story writers. Then we had the 3-D artists: block builders, marble run builders, puppet makers, jewelry makers, costume designers and pinata engineers. Then we had performers! We had all kinds of performers! Dancers, singers, rappers, Michael Jackson impersonators, percussionists and actors who specialized in melodramatic themes!! 

All learning at Indy Art Lab is consensual, self directed or facilitated by me or one of our official camp volunteers. From the bottom of my heart, I cannot thank enough, Rhianna, Ferrell, Troy and Wendy for all their help, patience and gentle care with the campers. 

I cannot thank Ms. Francetta Peterson enough for inviting me to the camp. We had a wonderful time.

Next up: Stringtown Park on July 3rd at 9:00 AM.

Poetry writing.

Experimental painters.

Puppet making center.

Tacky glue is useful for creating stick puppets.

Mixed media puppet art.

Making a puppet talk takes practice.

Geometric abstract paintings...

Setting up a painting station.

Working with felt is cool.

Puppet show!

Engineering and building a good pinata is hard work!

Decorating the pinata is the easy part.

Busting the pinata is the best part!

Everybody got to hit the pinata at least 20 times!!!!!

It still wouldn't break!

Let's hit it again!

And again!

One more time!!

Neurololgical Benefits of Art Experience

Adele Diamond is one of my favorite cognitive science researchers.

First Day!

 
We had an excellent time this morning. If I may, I would like to name some folks who deserve special recognition: Francetta Peterson asked me to help her with the creative arts portion of her Indy Parks Summer Supervised Play program at our first Innovate Indy Summit and I was more than happy to lend her a hand. We have had textile materials support from Carol Wellman of My Sister's Place and I was thrilled when Vic Welch of Moeller Printing called me and said he had 20,000 sheets of drawing paper for us. Alvin Sangsuwangul has been unbelievable with his efforts at Innovate Indy, assisting Francetta and myself and I am so happy to have him as my friend and colleague. I appreciate Tom Weidenbach of Indy Parks for his support also. My neighbor Tammy helped us immensely this morning with set up and I don't know what we would have done with out her assistance. George Brookins and Payton Gaw were also instrumental in setting up camp this morning and assisting campers with their projects.

 We had approximately 38 campers in attendance today and I was so happy with this group. They are such good kids! We have actors and actresses, painters, builders, illustrators, storytellers, acrobats, jewelry makers, marble run engineers and they are all full of immense levels of energy!!

We started our camp today talking about how to set up a work space and where to access materials. The children then viewed a demo on circle geometry, mandala design, experimental drawing, drawing from observation and marble run engineering. It was time to begin work, and away we went. 

After a cookie break, the children discovered the costume bag. All of a sudden, the children's focus shifted to theatre and dance!

Tomorrow we are going to continue our investigations of story telling and performance art. We are also going to look at beading, building taller launch towers for our marble runs, and investigate the art library. Looking forward to more action tomorrow!