Story Trees

Magic markers are all the rage until something better comes along. Today something better came along: paint! And lots of it. Students began the afternoon with a group painting project, filling a large canvas with their best representation of an apple tree. Why a tree, you might ask? Since the Moya theme is “storytelling” through various media, we want to get the students thinking about various genres of stories: literature, drama, oral tradition, and the numerous sub-types within each large division. For example, within literature, one finds fiction, non-fiction, biography, mystery, history, etc. So this is where the trees come in: each of the many branches the students painted today will be linked with a particular type of story. All the branches on the tree are interconnected, just as all story types are interconnected.

Before completing the homemade instrument project, Mr. Matthew and Mr. Ben showed an inspirational instrument-making video: Mr. Rogers Goes to the Saxophone Factory. Then the full creative capacity of this ArtSpace class was unleashed on the task of decorating the box guitars that have occupied the majority of the last few classes. Paint flew, ribbons fluttered, and glue attached things together. If mess is indicative of creative effort, then we definitely set the gold standard today.