Summer is finally here and can be a wonderful time for families to spend time together and for kids to explore and have fun. However without the routine of school it can be hard for children to maintain their oral health. Your family’s dental health is very important to our partners at Yummy Dental & Orthodontics and they have some tips to having a tooth-healthy summer!
Between traveling,
sleeping in, sports events and other summer fun, it can be easy to become
relaxed with your children’s normal dental routine. Kids are unlikely to
wake up or go to bed at the same time everyday like they do during the school
year, but sticking to a regimented dental routine can help prevent future
cavities and oral complications. It’s important to brush twice a day for
two minutes at a time and floss once daily to remove debris and keep the mouth
clean and healthy. Events will happen that will disrupt the routine of course,
but going back to it every time will reinforce its importance.
Being on summer break
can also mean gravitating towards less healthy foods and indulging in more
sweet and starchy foods such as cookies and chips that can linger on the teeth.
While indulging in some summer treats is fine in moderation, it’s best to set a
limit on these types of foods and choose healthier and more teeth friendly
options such as fresh fruits, cheese, and veggies and dips. Also be sure
to keep hydrated and drink plenty of water instead of juices and other sugary
drinks that can lead to tooth decay.
Yummy Dental & Orthodontics’ friendly staff will be more than happy to provide you with more helpful tips to keep your teeth healthy and clean during the summertime. They also recommend that you schedule your regular appointment with one of our Yummy Dental doctors to get your teeth professionally cleaned and checked out to prevent any cavities or decay. Before you know it the kids will be back at school so be sure to get any school dental health forms in advance! For people who are new to the area or are looking to change their pediatric dentist, feel free to call their Chicago office (773.281.8100) or Glenview office (847.729.4700) to schedule an appointment!
Summer is officially in full swing, which means warmer weather and clearer skies for outside activities. Whether you’re planning a getaway trip or spending some quality time at home with your family, we hope that you’re having an amazing and relaxing summer vacation.
Along with our partners at Yummy Dental & Orthodontics for Kids, we also hope that during this time that you’re away, you’re keeping up with your daily oral routine. Your dental health is very important to us because we understand the positive effects that a beautiful smile can have on your self-esteem and confidence.
During these summer months, we tend to eat more sugary foods and drinks such as ice cream and soda to keep cool in this heat. Without brushing or flossing your teeth daily, bacteria can build up on your teeth and eat away at the enamel that protects them, leaving your teeth exposed to sensitivity.
Fluoride, a mineral found in water sources, is commonly used to reduce the number of cavities found in patients of all ages. Yummy Dental’s professional fluoride treatment ensures that your child will receive an adequate amount of this mineral to strengthen the enamel in his or her teeth. Fluoride can also treat early stages of tooth decay before it becomes visible, which makes it an amazing cavity fighter!
Yummy Dental’s friendly staff will be more than happy to provide you with helpful tips to keep your teeth healthy and clean during the summertime. They also recommend that you schedule your regular appointment with one of their doctors to get your teeth professionally cleaned and checked out to prevent any cavities or decay. For people who are new to the area or are looking to change their pediatric dentist, feel free to call the Chicago office (773.281.8100) or the Glenview office (847.729.4700) to schedule an appointment!
February is National Children’s Dental Health Month. Yummy Dental and Orthodontics for Kids (a valued partner and supporter of Kohl Children’s Museum) is celebrating by sharing five easy steps to helping your child avoid cavities.
Did you know that childhood cavities are the #1 childhood disease, even more prevalent than childhood asthma, childhood obesity, and juvenile diabetes?
Here are 5 easy steps to help your child:
1. Brush two to three times per day and floss every night.
2. Use an age-appropriate toothpaste.
3. Visit a pediatric dentist every six months. Enamel in kids’ teeth are different than adults’ teeth. Cavities can spread very quickly in kids.
4. Ask for digital x-rays. They are safer because they reduce exposure to radiation by 70% or more compared to traditional x-rays.
5. Remember that it’s not just candy that causes cavities.
For more information, visit www.aapd.org and www.ada.org
– Dr. Grace Yum, Founder of Yummy Dental & Orthodontics for Kids
In celebration of Kohl Children’s Museum’s 30th Anniversary, the Museum partnered with six local artists to create Trees on Parade, a collection of whimsically painted fiberglass trees on display through October 7 at Northbrook Court Mall. In March, Trees on Parade was a featured exhibit at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show at Navy Pier. The six fiberglass trees (representing stylized versions of the Museum’s logo) stand five feet tall and are captivatingly decorated to celebrate the spirit of childhood and the Museum. Four of the trees will be auctioned at the Museum’s An Evening to Imagine gala on October 8.
The first of the series of trees was designed and created by Bryan Butler, a local artist specializing in illustration, fine art, and graphic design. Over the course of his career, Mr. Butler has worked with such prestigious organizations as Lurie Children’s Hospital, the Chi-Town Jazz Festival, and Moody Bible Institute.
Working on a project for Kohl Children’s Museum was a bit of a departure for Mr. Butler, but he was extremely intrigued with the project and opportunity when the Museum’s Board Chair Paul Sutenbach and his wife, Linda, reached out to him when the project was in its infancy.
In order to gain a better understanding of the Museum, its mission, and vision, Mr. Butler asked to meet with staff members and pay a visit to the Museum in order to visualize the physical space, take pictures, and capture its spirit. While he looked at this project as a challenge, he also felt that he could impact the Museum by creating a work of art that would help portray the many facets of the organization and its impact on children. For example, the front of the sculpture represents the architectural design of the building and the geometric yellow mimics the roof of the museum. The blue represents the sky. where one can note the presence of a small aircraft soaring upwards and skywriting “30 Years and Growing.” The aircraft is a tribute to the former airfield that the Museum now sits upon.
The green represents the landscape surrounding the Museum. The red color on the side of the sculpture is meant to draw the eye upward and also to trigger excitement. The artist chose to use primary colors, as these are colors with which young children identify.
The back of the sculpture is an intricate display of white on blue with inspirational words about raising children well. These words are layered upon each other to create texture and interest. Kohl Children’s Museum’s familiar green logo is also present with a subtle nuance – the artist’s handprint is playfully overlaid on it.
This project was extremely rewarding for Mr. Butler, who looked at it not only as a great challenge, but as a chance to work with and support a great organization.
–Sheila Hornthal, volunteer writer
This past fall as our gardening season came to a close, we began a super exciting program to keep our focus on the growing power of the garden. Fresh foods and vegetables became our anchor for our new program that focused on cooking, called Kitchen Creations.
It has been amazing sharing this experience with our visitors. Plus it has been fun to be able to share what we make! The experience completely echoes the idea that kids should and can help in the kitchen. Last fall, the New York Times ran an article titled Cooking With Kids: 5 Reasons You Should Be Doing It
It outlines five key points that go beyond supporting bringing kids into the cooking process; they cement the idea of participation. Facilitating the Kitchen Creations program here at the Museum, we see these play out in real-time. Their five points ring true every minute the family sits down with us during the program!
1. Children who cook become children who taste, and sometimes eat.
2. Children who cook say “I can,” not “I can’t.”
3. Cooking is a way to talk about health.
4. Cooking is a way to talk about healthy ingredients.
5. Cooking brings cooks of all ages closer.
This sounds all well and good, but it takes a lot of mental and physical prep to make this happen. Cooking with kids can be like a roller coaster; it is definitely an exhilarating and fun ride! Here are a couple of tips we have figured out to help to add in that extra safety net if you are ready to take the leap.
1. Be patient.
2. Be organized. If you can, help create a context. Large context: Wonder where the ingredients come from. Local/in-the-moment context: Use your senses to explore each ingredient; this makes it a game later to see if they can taste each one after they are all mixed together.
3. Let them use real cooking tools and model correct usage. When it comes to cutting fruit and veggies, from apples to avocados and zucchini, we have found that pre-cutting the fruit or veggie into large wedges, then having the kids use a pumpkin carving blade to cut the pieces smaller is a magic moment.
4. Break up a recipe into manageable steps (not easy steps—we want a challenge! We want ownership of this process!)
5. Don’t be worried if they don’t eat it. The whole process is a win no matter what. We are exposing children to new ingredients and flavors. Think ahead: if they are exposed to the same ingredient over and over again, familiarity breeds comfort and willingness to try.
Knowing your child’s abilities as an individual is important in helping to determine what they are capable of doing when helping in the kitchen. Our final tip is a simple guideline as to what your kids can do at different developmental stages and how you can challenge them to do more.
Preschoolers, 2-5 years, can start by learning the basic concepts that they will need to succeed in the kitchen. It is important to keep in mind that small tasks that don’t require much prep work by you will be best. These tasks can include:
School-aged cooks, 6-8 years, can be helpful in not only following your verbal directions, but also helping read recipes as their reading skills develop. It is during this age period that you can allow them to begin using different appliances, such as the stove or oven, with your close supervision, as well:
How do you invite your child chef into the kitchen? What are your favorite recipes that you like to enjoy at home? Let us know on our Facebook page! We hope to see you at the Museum next time during Kitchen Creations, so we can create great food together!
–Tim Abel & Amy Rohlman, Museum Education Specialists
by Tim Abel, Museum Education Specialist
I am glad to share the Museum’s Art Studio with artists! It is such a fantastic opportunity to share a new perspective and art making style with the visitors. As an added benefit, I get to ask them about their art making, ideas about working with children and collaboration.
This past February, I was able to work with Rachel Davis while she shared her practice of monoprinting with our art studio visitors.
Tim Abel: You brought a lot of great natural materials from a nest
to shells to shed antlers for the visitors to explore during the residency. It
was great to see a child interact with these items and draw their own
conclusions about them or to see how surprised they were when they figured
something out, like how to put the lobster claw back together. There was care
in the selection of objects you brought to share, so I guess I have two
questions.
First, do you have a favorite item of your own that you have
found from the natural world?
Rachel
Davis: A favorite item from the curiosity box:
I collect
objects from nature all the time, whether I am on vacation and am beach combing
or just on a stroll in the neighborhood. I like to pick up things that catch my
eye. I choose things based on their texture, color and shape. I am drawn to the
lumpy, organic shapes of dried seed pods, oyster shells, snail shells and the
texture of snake skin.
I have some stones at home that are special for their markings: gray with white stripes. One stone I shared at the residency, I found in Montana. It has beautiful lichens covering one side.
And second, a larger
question: how does the natural world inspire your own artmaking?
These materials are important “supplies” in my work in the same way that paint and paper are supplies. I look, draw and study these items when I begin creating a new work of art.
I grew up in a rural area in upstate New York
and played in the woods and in creek beds and loved building forts. I think of
this open ended playtime as similar to my art making process. When I make
compositions in a print or painting it is a process similar to play and often
begins with objects I have found in nature.
Rachel Davis’ artwork, clockwise from top left: shellcave, horn, fishnet and hillside. All are Ink and paint on wood, 4 x 6” and made in 2014.
I have asked the past teaching artists that have visited the art studio about collaboration, so I wanted to get your take on it too. How do you prepare for a collaboration?
I think of
collaboration, whether between myself and another artist or a larger scale
project like Kohl artist-in-residence, as a conversation. There are pauses left
for the other to speak and contribute. There should be spaces where we can
contradict or disagree with each other. When this happens through the formal
process of art making the result is more dynamic and engaging. It becomes a
problem to solve. Instead of a linear process I like to embrace a process where
the outcome is not predetermined. This insures spontaneity and playfulness in
the process.
For my residency at Kohl I knew I wanted to capture the experience the children had making marks painting on the plexiglass. I have been working on these four inch round blotter papers and thought the material lent itself to capture a partial print that kids had created. This way the process was completely open ended and we were not confined to making a thing. Just collecting favorite marks, colors, and brush strokes. My prep for the residency at Kohl was to create a few formal constraints (for example creating interesting colors of paint not just red, blue yellow, but teals, pinks, grays, metallics) and the four-inch round paper stock. The process was very much open within those constraints.
The monoprinting workshops during the residency were so process-driven, in that they invited the visitors to explore: mark making with the monoprinting tools, color mixing or just to have fun squishing the ink across the plexiglass. These playful investigations are what the printed image became, like a snapshot of the action and experimentation. Do you have any advice to anyone who is new to art making with children or is trying something at home that would help embrace this style of art making?
I think it’s
important to let children use real tools and not toy tools. For example during
the residency we used brayers, and decorative painting tools and real textile
relief blocks from India. I think this authenticity is important. Though kids
are playing, their play is their work and it is real.
I also like
to use common household objects like a toothbrush, comb, Q-tip, cotton balls,
paper bags, whisk, or spatula for art making.
*************
To
see photos from the full residency, follow this link to our Flickr Album!
And spread the word: We are looking for our next artist for our upcoming Summer Residency period (to take place at some point July to August 2016)! If you are interested or know of a Chicago-area artist who loves to collaborate, work with the community or just has great ideas that should be shared, check out the link to our application for more details.
Also, check out the beautiful monoprints that we have been able to produce in conjunction with our Art Across Oceans: South Africa project! This video shows some of the South African participants’ creative work!
If you have any questions about this project or the residency, don’t hesitate to contact me!
I was able to talk to Suzanne
Sebold, a recent guest Artist in Residence here at Kohl Children’s Museum, about her background as an artist. Her residency brought us a fantastic
chance to experiment and investigate different ways to make paper! We played around with embedding found materials in single sheets and collectively made a large
collaborative installation of paper circles made from pulp painting with
fibers dyed with beets, yellow onion, purple cabbage, hibiscus flower petals
and other natural dyes! Here is a link
to an album of the residency project. Please take a look at it, and watch our website for our next Artist in Residence!
Experimental painting, with pulp dyed with beets and yellow onion skins.
TIM ABEL, MUSEUM EDUCATION SPECIALIST: Papermaking is such an awesome process! I feel like with every papermaker I meet I learn a new thing about paper. It was great that you were able to come to the Museum to share your take on working with the materials, especially how you combined natural dyes and materials with non-traditional materials like plastic mesh. There is something about papermaking that reflects each maker’s personality. I would love if you could share how you developed your experimental approach to papermaking.
SUZANNE SEBOLD: I am the daughter of second generation printers, and quality of paper was a dinner table topic. My childhood weekends were spent
at my father’s print shop choosing paper to draw and assembling books. It
wasn’t until I was in college at the School of the Art Institute that I had my
Aha moment. I realized as I was stitching a book comprised of my own handmade
papers that I really learned this when I was a child sitting in my father’s
shop. That’s when I realized my family’s influence on my choice to study and
learn papermaking.
Suzanne Sebold’s own experimental papers, made of gold chain + abaca and cotton + gum Arabic + pigment + plastic mesh
I love how much
wonder and surprise was built into making paper with our visitors. Do you carry over this to your own practice?
If so, how?
I
have always been drawn to nature and natural materials. Natural dye was one of
my studies during my undergraduate work at SAIC as well as in Senegal, West
Africa. I found it fascinating that natural dyes could have permanence and be
used on so many materials such as paper, clay, leather and metal. I even make my own paints using natural dyes.
I always look to my immediate environment for inspiration.
I love asking this as a follow up: Are there any materials that you have worked with in the past that have surprised you?
There are so many predictable and controlled environments that we operate in I really enjoy adding the element of the “unknown.” I am always amazed with plant-based natural dyes. One trick I have learned is how to preserve the color, through trial and error.
Left: Prepped pulps for papermaking
Right: Dried pulp painting with dyes from purple cabbage, hibiscus petals, beets and strawberry leaves
I am very interested how other artists approach collaboration and collaborative projects, so how do you prepare yourself for collaboration?
I believe collaborating and connecting are a way of life - with the intention of sharing knowledge. I think the most important aspect is to remain open and receptive to new techniques and traditions.
Examples of experimental single sheets with embedded buttons, mesh and sequin ribbon created by Museum guests during the residency
Since you have been a brief visitor to our art studio space, I would love if you could leave us with a go-to art project that you could suggest for any parent or teacher to easily undertake as a way of inviting wonder and surprise into their home or classroom?
Take a nature walk in your community. Find plants and flowers that you can press into paper. Observe the colors and interactions. If you have a garden, harvest some of your material to create a natural dye. The dye can be used to paint on paper or add color to your own handmade paper. You can make handmade paper in a blender from recycled paper in your home.
–Interview with Tim Abel, Museum Education Specialist
Kohl Children’s Museum’s Math Counts program introduces children to the wonderful world of math in a fun, informative way. We start off each program reading a book before doing fun activities together that deal with the basic building blocks of math: sets and patterns, counting, numerosity, geometry – even algebraic thinking!
Literacy can be a great connective tool for exploring and celebrating subjects like math. While reading a book, a child may recognize the repetition of words and begin to recite the story or make predictions on what happens next - this is the child practicing patterning! Through their everyday routines, children are also using early math skills, which can be simple things like counting food, noticing shapes like a stop sign, or patterns on their clothing.
I’ve collected 10 great books and activities to introduce children to early math skills while they enjoy great stories, too! For some of the books, I’ve linked easy activities from the Museum’s At Home Zone that you can do along with the story to practice concepts introduced in each book. Welcome to the world of math thinking!
1. A Pair of Socks by Stuart J. Murphy: Sorting can be done with anything around your home. This book is great way for children to become more familiar with sorting. Using the activity you can start simple, like sorting socks by pairs and then make it a little more complex by sorting socks by color. (At Home Zone idea!)
2. Just How Long Can a Long String Be? by Keith Baker: Measuring with a ruler can be complicated. This book invites children to see measurement in a non-standard method by using string. (At Home Zone idea!)
3. Pattern Bugs by Trudy Nicholas Harris: This is a great book to introduce children to patterning. Children will catch on to the repetition as the story is told and may guess what comes next in the pattern of words. Get your body moving and make a pattern with your body with this activity. (At Home Zone idea!)
4. Actual Size by Steve Jenkins: How big or small things are can be hard to put in perspective for young children. This book is a great introduction to spatial thinking through direct size comparison. In this story you will see images of the actual size of different animal body parts. They can see just how or small or big they are when they compare their height to other people in their home or the animal body parts in the story. (At Home Zone idea!)
5. Dog’s Colorful Day by Emma Dodd: A great book to start counting in a fun colorful way.
6. Five Creatures by Emily Jenkins: Ever thought about how you could sort your family members or friends? In this story, a little girl who begins to sort her family in to different categories. This is a great book to use for sorting and dialogue for different ways to sort your family. (At Home Zone idea!)
7. Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh: Shapes can be fun! This is a great book for children to learn new shapes while also discovering how some animals that can be made with different shapes.
8. A Pig is Big by Douglas Florian: Telling a child she is 3 feet tall may not mean as much as telling her she is as tall as a dog. This book will allow children to see “bigger” and “smaller” in different ways.
9. Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews: Counting can be done in many different ways. This book allows children to count while exploring where black dots can be found. The activity will have children counting while exploring nature! (At Home Zone idea!)
10. Balancing Act by Ellen Stoll Walsh: Different methods can be used for measuring. This book measures the weight of animals! It is also a great way for children to see that rulers are not the only tools we use to measure things.
And that’s not all: Here’s another great list of books that support the development of spatial skills in children, an important pre-math skill!
While doing some of these activities and reading the books, children may pick up on a different math skill or even add to the one you are already doing, like patterning and measurement combined. Try these activities and challenge your children. Adapting the activities to make them more personable allows the child to relate and be more invested in any activity. Pick one of your children’s favorite books and try to create a new math activity and put it to the test!
Remember, Math Counts takes place approximately every other Friday from 2:30 – 4 p.m. at the Museum. Check our website for the programming calendar for details. I’ll count on seeing you around!
–Teresa Osorio, Museum Education Specialist
You may have seen the words “project,” “project-based learning”, or “the Project Approach” in recent articles and news relating to education. These are current buzzwords in the education field because of the way curriculum and standards such as Common Core can be integrated into a project. Since it is used so frequently, there are many definitions and philosophies on project based learning.
My go-to reference on the topic is Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years by Judy Harris Helm and Lilian Katz. In the book, a project is defined as an “investigation of a topic worth learning about.” The goal in the Project Approach is to find a topic in which students are highly invested. Then use children’s questions on that topic to develop an in-depth study that involves investigations, authentic activities, and observations so the children have a deeper understanding on the world around them.
The teacher takes on multiple roles in this process: facilitating and guiding the learning process by providing materials and resources (such as artifacts, books, and art supplies), bringing in experts on the topic, and going on a field site visits to answer questions posed by the children. The teacher is also there as a documenter, demonstrating the growth of the children throughout the project and showing how the children are learning, not just what they are learning.
There are countless reasons why the Project Approach should be done in the classroom. I believe the Project Approach shapes how a child learns and naturally fosters a love of learning in a child for their whole life. Here are a just a few of the big reasons on why the Project Approach is important:
1) Children are given a reason to practice academic skills. In the Project Approach, children are highly invested in a topic and it becomes something they WANT to learn about. When they want to learn, they will naturally want to read, write, count, and solve problems on that topic. For example, if a child is studying fire trucks and wants to know how many lights are on the fire truck, they will practice counting and then tallying the number of lights. Or if a child is trying to label something on a fire truck, they will look up how to spell and then practice writing the word down.
2) Children develop positive dispositions towards learning. A disposition is a frequent and voluntary habit of thinking. Being curious, taking initiative, and accepting responsibility are all dispositions that can be nurtured in project work. Children are more likely to continue using these dispositions outside of the classroom if they are frequently used in the classroom.
3) The Project Approach enhances brain development. In the Project Approach, children develop mind brain capacity because they are using all areas of the brain. They use their senses through different experiences and authentic activities. When discussing a topic or reading a book, children connect what they are learning to what they already know based on past experiences. They analyze, hypothesize and categorize their learning. Finally, there is opportunity to practice what they learned and demonstrate their new knowledge through writing, drawing, presentations, and representations.
4) The Project Approach connects naturally to curriculum and standards in an authentic way that is meaningful to both the teacher, students, and administration. Topic selection from the students allows buy-in, and then with the correct teacher planning, authentic activities can easily be tied with the standards. It is important to mention that standards are being met in project work. The project gives children a connected way of achieving these markers for educational success. For example, in a spider project, the students wanted to create a museum to share all the work they had done; this relates to Common Core English Language Arts Anchor Standard that focuses on conducting research projects as a way of showing proficiency in undertaking different types of investigation. This was a totally student-directed and ingenious way that led to them making advertisement signs, display panels, sorting their work, reflecting on what they had done, and collaborating together to make the perfect museum.
One of the reasons I love working at Kohl Children’s
Museum is because of the strong belief that learning should be engaging,
inquisitive, investigative, and self-directed. These key ideas are seen
throughout the Museum exhibits and teacher outreach programming, including our
own Early Childhood Connections flagship
outreach program which brings educators, parents, and children from underserved neighborhoods together through
the use of the Project Approach.
As we continue to blog I will be posting more on the Project Approach and samples of projects that have been done in our Early Childhood Connections program.
– Sarah Salto, Museum Education Specialist
Let’s face it, it takes a lot of empathy to share. Even with siblings, and especially with strangers. This is part of the magic of the Museum: all kinds of kids who don’t know each other work side by side daily here and yet through cooperation and teamwork make big things happen without chaos. Do stuffed animals in the Pet Vet get treated by an impromptu team of child vets daily? Yes. Is our Whole Foods Market pretend grocery store pandemonium? No.
Setting up the environment to foster these everyday moments of empathy plays a big role. Providing opportunities of implicit “otherness” allows for curiosity and genuine wonder. What happens when a visitor is introduced to lullabies from all around the world or confronted with the word “read” in a dozen different languages? Both these instances force dialogue and create wonder through inquiry.
As an art educator, this thought-journey about collaboration takes me back to art creation. Making art is essentially about making a place: temporary, in the moment, imaginary, or celebrated over time as a prized masterpiece. It is a place made possible by becoming engrossed in the making.
What better way to confront community and empathy by opening up this art place to another person? Working collaboratively forces us to navigate encounters with another person.
It can be messy trying to negotiate working that closely, in general. That is why I like collaborative projects so much. Even though the fright of making art with another person looms large, when a single goal is announced, it somehow becomes much easier.
This is not to say that art is the great equalizer, because that would be selling the process short. Contradiction and conflict are mainstays of artmaking: they are just called juxtaposition and sublimation. Freud famously reminds us that learning requires frustration. That is exactly what purposeful artmaking does by confronting the maker with a controllable amount of frustration, and the support of an adult when needed. Collaborative projects can happen in a frenzy of activity (like painting a cardboard deer sculpture) or become quiet and contemplative by trying to weave fabric into a large loom made out of construction fencing. The materials are simple for both: cardboard and paint or recycled construction fencing and upcycled fabric. The thing to shoot for in collaborations is to provide space for all participating, so the scale of both projects are larger-than-child-scale.
So be brave and introduce collaboration to your learning environment. In fact, it might already be happening implicitly. Here are a few tips that could help you dive into the messy world of collaboration or strengthen your collaborative moments:
1. Set boundaries: think about the good questions and help a discussion happen about sharing/working with each other. “How can things be changed? How do we respect other people’s art? What are the ground rules for painting in close proximity with each other?” (Trust me, this will help minimize chances—or at least provide a future framework—for the inevitable paint splattering on a neighbor or her contribution to the work.)
2. Create an area that can grow through
individual additions. I call this process an accumulative collaborative
project. The scale grows with each addition, and the growing work shows how
each part both adds and responds to the overall work. This is great, because
each person’s addition remains unique and authentic, but is influenced by the
close proximity to other work. The visual dialogue becomes so rich! Also, by
creating a project that will allow for all members to initially add something
independently is especially good for groups new to the collaborative
environment. It acts as a confidence booster, and a way of introductions.
3. Allow the participants to add to the project, or you can sneakily add their work yourself. In the cardboard structure above, I created the area through gluing and stacking open boxes to create nooks for participants to add and transform. For the wall work below, I slowly added projects that had been left behind in the art studio. This has evolved into a wall of houses, even inspiring a visitor to think about bird houses and adding a chalk drawing with a bird and tree nested into the cardboard sculptures.
4. Set a project and allow it to change over time. As an educator, you have to set the stage. It isn’t taboo to have an end goal, but keep that to yourself. This goes back to the tip about setting up boundaries for art behavior. You can set initial boundaries with what materials are offered, the original space set aside for the project, or the duration of the project. My limitation for both projects above: the primary inspiration and base material was cardboard. When it comes to collaboration, keep it simple. It is always surprising to see where the project goes.
5. Okay, now you are a seasoned collaborator. How about co-planning the project? Listen to your participants: What are they interested in? You can build collaboration into your teaching tools. Child-centered learning is all about collaboration. Do they really love spiders? Okay, do your research: map out possibilities for yourself, then discuss what most excites them. For instance, will they be making a collaborative web sculpture or will they want to focus on making the spider ecosystem? Maybe they love the spiders, and want to figure out what materials to use to make spider sculptures. To follow the pun, be the fly on the wall. Not only that, be the very educated fly on the wall, and be able to help or answer questions when they arise.
Just remember, negotiation, respect, compromise and cooperation become concepts understood through the actual process of planning and making and are concretely represented by the finished project. As an adult facilitating collaboration, be calm, set boundaries, listen to the group needs, then become part of the process.
Here is a link of some of the collaborative projects that have been undertaken in the Museum’s Art Studio over the past year!
Don’t be afraid to get messy! In the end, the outcome is always a surprise and a result of many hands working together.
–Tim Abel, Museum Education Specialist