Thursday, April 27, 2006

Fancy brushwork



It was fabric painting day at flower school which went off pretty uneventfully. As I sat in class waiting for teach and watching the children file in, the bad boy of the group proudly strode up and down in front of me announcing he hated art and wasn't going to do anything for me today. I decided just to blank him.

The lesson began with bug making. We used our hairy pipe cleaners for the body, adding telephone wire antennae and gluing on googly eyes. 'This is taking FAR too long ' announced one little entomologist. Obviously he was on a tight schedule.

Off to the dinner hall for fabric painting. The bad boy was very excited about this and first in the queue. As we walked along the corridor I asked him if he was the same boy who hated art and wasn't going to do anything for me? He agreed he was and had the good grace to look sheepish. Have you you changed your mind I asked? Yes. Sure? Yes. I left it at that.

With the fabric successful painted I waived goodbye as the children filed out. Goodbye flowers, goodbye flowers, I called. Hey, said the lad with no time to spare. Who you calling a flower? Certainly not you I replied.

Sarcasm and irony are really lost on children of this age. When I presented them with buckets of paint, they asked if it was paint. Well it ain't no chicken soup was my smart mouth reply which prompted the painters to discuss and contrast at some lengthy the merits of painting with various flavours of soup. Think I'll stick to yes/no answers in future.

This is the grass and the earth which I'm going to sew one on top of the other and cut back to reveal the path meandering through the greenery. Said I would take my sewing machine to school to give the kids an idea of how it had been done. That should prompt a few insightful remarks and challenges I would image. Can't wait.

2 comments:

Helen said...

love the bad boy scenario. You're getting them to do so much! Wish we'd had you at our school :)

Digitalgran said...

I just love the comments children make on various topics and wish I'd kept a notebook of them to look back upon.
I agree with Helen S. I wish you'd been my art teach too.