Local DMU Volunteering – Session 3 (recycling sculptor)

Local DMU Volunteering – Session 3 (recycling sculptor)

volunteering

I helped set up at 9:30am, this included bring in loads of bags of rubbish and dumping them in the middle of the room. once all children were seated and had their books the teachers started to show them the example sheets. the sheets for this week was different artist examples for the children to look at and help them understand how they could use the rubbish to make a sculpture. this was a very hands on session for both the children and us as we had to help them alot with the process of making the sculptors.

For this activity they had the rubbish, scissors and tape to us.

bags of rubbish

There was 5 groups making different animals.

  • Sea turtles
  • elephant (my group)
  • shark
  • show leopard
  • tiger

I decided to go sit with the elephants, this was a group of 4-5 girls. Before we started to make the elephant they had 15 mins to draw their own design in their sketchbook and then they all came together and had a A1 sheet to combine their ideas before they would start. Once the design was finalized and the children had given them selves a task each. Starting was a little slow but as they started talking they got more inventive and we started to make a river for the elephant to drink out of and grass around it.

i really enjoyed watching and helping the children with this task and they all worked together to create something and when there was a problem like it wouldn’t stand its self up, they would work together to find a way to make it stand this involved using a pot under its feet and then to fill it with blue objects to make it look like water. Below is a photo of the elephant.

Soon after this photo was taken the elephant sadly died due to a child’s foot apparently not liking it so it was kicked over swiftly. After all the mess way made the children helped us put all the rubbish back in to bags and then they went home. This was such a fun experience and really showed me how even thought they had some what limited materials they really did well and made structures with the materials, this helped me understand that you don’t have to make something so literal for the outcome to be what you want it to.

π™³π™Όπš„ Local Volunteering – Session 2 (colour wheel)

π™³π™Όπš„ Local Volunteering – Session 2 (colour wheel)

Volunteering

The classes start at 10am but the volunteers turn up at 9:30am to help set up, this time all it involves was putting chairs and table. When the children (30 children) turned up we helped give them name tags and their own sketchbook, so they can see all their work together. Once they where sat down the teacher started to explain what words we use to explain different aspects of colour and what the children would be doing that day.

The sheets below are the handouts for that day, we explained what the words mean on the sheet to the left. These sheets really helped the children as they got an example of the colour wheel they had to make.

The first task the children had to completer was to fill their own colour wheel with paint, for this we gave them a paint pallet with yellow, red and blue in and told them they have to make the colours and fill in each colour. This gave the a great experience of what primary colours ( primary colours are a set of colours that can be mixed to make all other colours) they would have to mix to make the ones they need for the colour wheel.

The other sheet we explained to the children is how colour can be used to express feelings, with the main two being how you can make a painting sad or happy. this lead to paint being thrown at the paper but in colour themes of how they where feeling at the time, once they had time to explore both of them sheets the next task was to draw themselves.

When drawing themselves they were given a sheet about proportions and showing how to draw a generic face. this was the hardest bit for them as they had to draw it and think about how they could do it as close as they could to reality, their parents helped them and it led to some very different outcomes. A lot of the older children did amazing with this part and stunted a lot of us on how well they managed to proportion the head. (one even doing a full body). Once they had done some drawing, some of the children decided to start doing backgrounds and this took form in beaches and living rooms with TVs.

This is not the original sheet they used, just an example I found on the internet