Dwarf workshop
Text and photos: Dilek Iusuf
We combined the colours with shapes, and now the Dwarves know which triangle is red or which circle is yellow. We used examples from everyday life, such as a red roof or the sun being a yellow circle.
We applied these principles to the decoration of a plasticine box. Parents participated to a greater or lesser extent. See the pictures and judge for yourself 🙂
The lesson continued with the legend of the snowdrop and sports/dance activity as in every lesson:
Romanian language and culture
Text: Eliza van Peppen
Last Saturday's lesson started with a brief recap of the concepts learned a week ago. We recalled the characters from "The Tale of Snow and Snowdrop", we established which are the months of winter (December, January and February), but we also paid attention to the others. The cardinal numbers are not at all unfamiliar to the little ones, we experienced a sports race from 1 to 20 and from 20 to 30, we are still practicing. The letter "I" was also well liked and easily remembered by the children.
The theme of the lesson was "Winter and winter sports". With the help of our technical means and the digital board, we watched a piece of the children's beloved film "The Frozen Kingdom", namely "Olaf's Song", defining the characteristics and beauty of winter. It was challenging and touching as at one point, an astonished and slightly intrigued little child asked me "why are we talking about winter if it's raining and not snowing outside?".
Also based on suggestive images, we discovered that in winter we can: ski, skate, play ice hockey, go sledging, bobsledding, etc. We also talked about sports that children play as extracurricular activities.
Here is the link to "Olaf's Song":As our school is participating in the project "Romania-100 Roots and a Look to the Future", I thought it would be nice to combine our theme with the project requirement. With this pretext, we watched a short film about Nadia Comăneci (The Perfect First 10) and told a story about the "Winter Olympic Games". The children learned that the Olympic Games have a long history dating back to 776 AD, that they were named after Mount Olympus in Greece. Through the conversation process, we defined the Olympic symbols (Logo, Mascot, Torch, Medals, Motto, Pledge). The best known symbol of the competition is the 5 rings (the 5 continents) and the colours (red, yellow, blue, green, black) all on a white background, were chosen so that each participating country has at least one colour on this universal Olympic flag.
Here is the video with Nadia Comăneci:In the last part of the lesson, we kicked off the above-mentioned project by creating drawings and collages capturing elements of national identity. We hope to finish the started drawings this week.
I look forward to a new lesson this Saturday when we will tackle the topic "Me and my World".
Play, personal development and photography
Text: Raluca Tudorache
Last Saturday we also inaugurated the first photography lesson of the Drama and Personal Development Workshop whose theme was Perspective.
In these lessons we will not focus much on technique, because I don't think the little ones are very interested in that, but rather on other aspects of the artistic side of photography: such as perspective, composition, light, etc.
So the lesson started with a little history of the camera as well as photography, which I reviewed and made sure they understood and retained details about the evolution of the camera. Mostly to point out that not so long ago people were much more thrifty and careful when it came to taking a picture. Developing and printing cost money so they had to think carefully before pressing the button.
So from the very first lesson the children have had the theme of not taking lots of photos, however tempting and accessible it may seem. In this way they increased their attention to the objects and the world around them, giving more importance to the choices they made.
Some experiments followed:
The first is to observe reality and objects, and what is meant by perspective and the angle from which we look at things. We photographed from several perspectives, analysing the chosen object, paying attention to details.
The next experiment was trying to make a portrait. Amidst laughter and giggles they managed to get themselves interested in doing their first portraits, being their own models.
The first photography course went well, although this time, unlike the drama course, we need to invest a bit more seriousness to get better results.
In the second part I explained to the children about the "Romania-100 roots and a look to the future" competition and the prizes at stake. I really wish we could win, both for the prizes the winner would receive, but also to promote our school. It wasn't easy to talk to the children about national identity, Romanian folklore and other typical symbols, as you can probably imagine, but what they resonated most with was the discussion about some of the rare animals found in the Carpathian Mountains such as the buffalo, the black goat and the lynx. We showed them important monuments such as Brâncuși's Infinity Column and traditional Romanian carpets and listened to Maria Tănase :))
So next time we'll be playing around with colours and even little cut-out photos to make collages and drawings with, and trusting in their sometimes overflowing creativity, hopefully they'll be great competitors in the competition.
So I look forward to the next lesson and until then please keep away from gutturals and other bad dreams.
See you soon! All the best!
