What fun!
Last month, Middle Schoolers had great fun learning how to make fabric and practicing community artmaking via classroom quilting bees ...weaving of every kind--- in choice-based textile studios. Our primary and intermediate learners spent time building and creating connections with our history of Chicago.
(We are also trying to create a textile/tactile quilted mural to share with everyone---A Chicago cityscape with our castaway weavings...We'll see:).)
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This month, we are looking at Chicago from a variety of viewpoints including Potawatomi knowledge of the animals, plants and insects of our region (our careful drawings are inspired by Maria Sibylla Merian's scientific illustrations)--- as well as Chicago's fame as a location for mighty modernism in architecture and our city's pride of place as the location of the "birth of skyscrapers."
We can't wait to create in the spirit of Jeanne Gang's forms and Zaha Hadid's lines and their mutual organic building philosophy. With this learning, we plan to build for our next century of progress.
Everyone will read "Remember," a poem illustrated by Tlinglit storyteller, Micheala Goade (We Are Water Protectors), to culminate poetry experience this semester. The poem is originally written by Joy Harjo, Mvskoke Nation performer, to inviting us all to remember...
(that Chicago is an amazing city!)
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Middle Schoolers will be creating needs-based mason bee, lady bug and ant habitats using green technology, the study of skyscrapers and the research of insect inhabitants. This will be a real world design challenge that will be installed in our Secret Garden à la fairy garden:)).
All designs and insect clients will be featured at our upcoming exhibit! Join us for the fun!
As Kinder and intermediate students finish their watercolor paintings, chalk sketches and 3D constructions, sharing our many viewpoints of Chicago for our exhibit, everyone will be working on creating raised bed infrastructures, wind chimes, whirligigs and more bug houses! HOORAY!
In CoLab, The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and 3rd graders will be learning from a special unit, Insect Invesigators. Room 217 will be looking closely at our native insects and prototyping this partnership for our outdoor Makerspace. This new collaborary will inform all of our projects this spring!
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We are culminating our Chicago Stories in quasi-mytho-poetics from multiple voices, perspectives and histories---all honoring OUR pride of place. Our pride of place is being Chicagoans (2023) and multi-age learners together in Waters School, within the Chicago River habitat, as a part of the Lake Michigan watershed and the Great Lakes Region.
We will honor many voices from Chicago's history---Potawatomi stories, Fort Dearborn stories, Bronzeville stories and both Chicago World's Fair stories (Annie's era:))... We will honor the voices of the plants, animals and the fish (and turtles :)) in our seas. We will tell the stories of our city block, our school, our neighborhood and will go downtown a bit too...
We will honor and elevate these, and our own voices, as we remember that Chicago is OUR kind of town---a city in a garden, with an "I will," attitude and a hopeful look toward the future---Science Finds, Industry Applies and Man Adapts...
Thank you for your support!
