This is a picture of Austin, the brains and brawn behind the Goris Leadership Camp, stapling in the final row of soda-bottle-patio-lights on our bookshelf.
As an activity at the Goris Leadership Camp last week, within just (4) 2-hour lessons children created artwork to decorate a "leadership bookshelf" which would remain at the school as testament to the camp.
Materials needed to decorate the entire bookshelf: 2 strings of Christmas lights, 15 soda bottles, scissors, markers, glitter, glue, paper, ribbon, printing paper, transfer paper, box cutters, stencil paper/cardstock, cut 8x10 cardboard lengths, pencils, masking tape, paint, paintbrushes, paint thinner, play-doh, craft wire
Day 1- Patio Lights
We decorated Jermuk sparkling water bottles with markers, glitter, glue, paper, and ribbon to make the patio lights from this link:
click here .
(During working time we compiled a list of the children's heroes. Later, we found the heroes' pictures online, uploaded them to picnik.com and edited the pictures with the "posterize" 2- color tool. For the next day we had these pictures printed out)
Day 2- Stenciling
Children were given their black & white pictures of their heroes, and instructed on whether they will be cutting out all the black areas of the photo or all the white areas (based on which I thought would make a better stencil).
Transfer paper was sandwiched, black side down, underneath the top layer printed photo and the bottom layer of the cardstock. Children traced all the black (or white areas, depending on the photo) with a pencil- the image of only these areas was transferred through to the cardstock.
Students taped the cardstock to a section of cardboard and were given small boxcutters to carefully cut the areas out which they traced.
example of student's artwork: Charents
Day 3- Painting on the Stencils & Origami
Student artworks were chosen, arranged, and carefully taped onto pieces of the disassembled shelving before the children arrived.
Katie's origami flower lesson took place while pairs of students were chose to leave the origami to paint stencils. Students each chose a color of paint, and painted over the stencil as a team (whether they had cut that stencil out the day before or not, due to the unequal number of finished stencils and present children). We started painting from inner-most images and worked our way to the furthest towards the edges. When children finished painting the stenciled image they were led to a different activity by Michael to keep traffic away from the working area. The cardstock stencils were not removed from the shelving after being painted, they were left ontop to dry.
: Martiros Saryan
Day 4- Superhero Day
Students were given ample amounts of play-doh to create their own superheroes. At the end of the lesson, students from teams gave short presentations about what superhero qualities and strengths their sculpture had and why they thought those were important traits.
Two of the camp's counselors had superheroes made of them- Alex and Austin :)
(Meanwhile, cardstock stencils were carefully removed from the shelving. Pools of paint which had gathered underneath wrong areas in some of the stencils were worked off with paint thinner and box cutters.) Other parts of the shelving were painted, and we prepared for construction of the bookshelf the next day.
Day 5- Bookshelf Unveil
On the final day of camp students conducted civil service projects in their community. During their final activities, I was inside the school with a couple handy Armenian counterparts and free PCV teachers assembling the bookshelf. After it was put together, the Christmas lights were strung through and the patio lights were wired into place, then stapled onto the shelf. Play-doh superhero sculptures were moved and placed onto the shelves.
When children entered the building for the final slideshow and announcements they saw the finished product! Pictures of Tumanyan, Charents, Shiraz, Cher, Saryan, Arshile Gorky, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Tyra Banks, Inna, Demi Lovato, Salena Gomez, Sirusho, Enrique, Putin, Pitbull, and more were stenciled onto the shelf blinking with decorated patio lights and play-doh superheroes!
