end of week 2, start of week three

thursday: i started separating the work from the three schools involved in the world beneath my feet project (wbmf) and beginning to pack them up for delivery to those schools. this took up most of the morning, and we had to go and try to find appropriate boxes to put it all into. I also spent some time finding out about plastazote, a foam material that we were using for our costumes. i ordered the quantity we needed and arranged to pick it up the next day.

friday: we packed up all the materials from the three schools, posted off the work from drummore primary and drove out to forth and ruchill primaries to give them their work. after this we did some work with the cameras and worked out how to create some stop frame animation.
after popping back to the office, we headed out to kirkintilloch to pick up the plastazote. upon returning, Maria had a meeting and i started clearing out the sparky office, discarding lot and lots of junk in the process.

saturday: met maria at the office at 1, in order to be at the tramway for saturday express starting at 2. we had three groups. each group started by finishing off or creating a monster creature from their drawings. we then took them out into the hidden gardens and took digital images and polaroids of all the creatures in their "natural" habitats.
the second group ended up consisting of only two children, brothers, dexter and coltrane. along with their mum, we took the boys and their monster creations out into the hidden gardens and took photos of them. the boys used this chance to play in the hidden gardens, with dexter demanding to be read to and not wanting to go back inside. it took some bargaining, but we all eventually got back inside and got cleared up for the last group (after dexter had me play wrestling and fill in his evaluation for him...)
the third and last group was made up of three slightly older children, so, with this group, we created a group animation, using one of the cameras. the film they created was really funny and a good result for them all.
this saturday express workshop was the last in the series for this term, although a big one day event has been planned for march and as long as there is funding, it will continue til next term.

week three
monday; i had the day off- yippee!

tuesday: spent a fair amount of the day reserarching variou parts of pirate costume. we had a staff meeting first thing and i had to try and organise a small gathering for the artists involved in wbmf. which i did. tuesday afternoon i started on cutting out the plastazote to create costumes or costume templates.

wednesday: Stanecastle
P6/7 class first again, brought in a treasure chest with some costume pieces in, introduced the children to Karen and open up the chest. The group explored the contents of the chest and then had the chance to create their own costumes. They drew designs onto paper for each of their costumes and then transferred these onto the plastazote. This they then cut out, decorated and wore. Photos were taken of all the children wearing their costumes and the hope is to be able to film them doing some drama in their costumes…
The second group progressed in much the same way, the whole class got involved in creating and wearing their costumes, and were quite sad when the session was over for that week.
Stanecastle have an in-service day next Wednesday, so there will not be a workshop until the week after, when Mags should be back as well, as she was unwell this week.
In the time between Stanecastle and HAC, we went to the beach and made some sand casts, with varying success. In the rest of the time after the tide was coming in, we went to troon for a walk along the beach front.

HAC
When we reached the Harbour Arts Centre, Jenny was already all set up and had sewn together the seaweed from last week to create two long strips that hung from the ceiling. The children all enjoyed looking at their creations and eagerly created two more pieces- one that they had started the previous week and another. The first was a piece that had been laid out lengthwise and had some other materials trapped in it. The second seaweed creation was a tubular piece that was created by wrapping wool tops around the polystyrene tubing. This piece was harder to felt than others, but the results were awesome. The children all really enjoyed it. Next week is the half-term, so there is no HAC either.

thursday: is today.. so far i have written this and made sure i know what i need to ask in order to write my assignment. meeting with karen later on to ask some questions.