Witch, Gardener & Curator + Every maestre + hormiga expert + hormiga artist + the tulip king = ¡ALL SCHOOL EL LAB!
🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜 Guiding Ideas 🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜
Growing the kiosko according to the amigues ideas, pick up on ants where we never had the opportunity to go in our last lab, where do ants live? how do ants live? what do ants eat? what do we have to learn from ants? What could ants learn from kids?
Ingredients for today’s lab
Bring in every teacher to also experience the magic of AN SCHOOL LAB, the Tulip King, (aka David, garden artists extraordinaire, and Wendy’s partner, along with his crew Steph and Camilo, the ant expert) , ¡Oye Hormiguita!, by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, an live ant farm, a huge blank canvas that was actually the back of a classic school pull down map of the US, for ant (and other things) artist Carles Garcia O’Dowd to co-create a map of an ant colony with the amigues, snack time as restaurant with movie $100 bills, popsicles, & a Brainstorm idea poster, a projected ASMR-like ant video, materials to finish the hormiga piñata’s legs, and a song we ended up repurposing… see if you might guess which one before you click on the link
What just happened?
Gracias a los skills de editación que tiene maestra Claudia (previously named La Colecionista), we have this curated 2 min and 53 second video of two hours of time. This Lab was so indoor and outdoor magic!!!
From the moment we opened with Nicole’s dramatic reading of ¡Oye Hormiguita! about a boy threatening to step on an ant, while the ant pleads for their life by drawing similarities between the life of an ant and that of a human, this LAB was diferente.. BIGGER.. MUY GRANDE! Every teacher participated, we had more guests than usual, two 45 min. sessions became one LOOOOONG 2.5 hour session. Our classrooms: Piedra, Papel, & Tijeras become one huge space without doors, and included the sidewalk and all the planters. For 2 and a half hours, the humans became ants, traveling freely between spaces.
THE ANT COLONY:
Guided by what the amigues told Carles, he co-created an ant colony complete with Sunny’s crocodile pool, Aliya’s ant fairy, Toly’s wild Australian and African animals, a leaf restaurant by Lola, a sleeping Spider by Matias, a library with Max, a basketball court with Jude, pastel con Camille, and a house neighborhood with Niko.
Carles has already asked to return to LAB to continue planning.
No olviden a mirar a los hormigas de Mi Casita día a día.
Un abrazo from Claudia ( la hormiga embarazada)
Pude compartir un martes de LAB con los amigos. Comenzamos haciendo el cartel, BRAINSTORM NEWS & FOOD HOTEL junto a Max, Lola, Tyler y Toly, y más tarde se unieron Oliver y Aliya.
Estuvimos trabajando con papeles, rompiéndolos y cortándolos con tijeras para luego pegarlos sobre el cartón y dar forma a nuestro cartel. Hubo un momento en el que Tyler dijo: “yo quiero hacer corazones”, y Lola añadió: “yo quiero poner glue”. Así fue como algunos se encargaban de rasgar el papel mientras otros aplicaban el glue para preparar la superficie.
Fue muy divertido, además, poder trabajar con amigos de otros salones y compartir esos espacios.
Después me fui al restaurante, donde pude ver cómo muchos amigos estaban emocionados por “comprar” sus snacks con billetes y monedas. De hecho, ¡Rey me invitó a un helado con su dólar!
También estuve recorriendo los salones para ver qué estaban haciendo otros compañeros y amigos. Fue muy gratificante compartir con Jessica su momento de periodismo, entrevistando a los amigos. Allí estaba Toly, explicándole muchas cosas interesantes.
SNACKTIME AS RESTAURANT: Snack time became an open restaurant in Piedra complete with the amigues’ snacks they “bought” with movie $100 bills, popsicles, & a Brainstorm idea poster.
Más tarde, pude compartir un momento con Carles, Camille y Theo, quienes estaban investigando qué más podían añadir al mural de Carles.
Camille decía: “una ballena”, y Theo proponía: “una piscina grande para la ballena”.
Closing the LAB, we gathered to sing: The ants go marching one by one.. hoorah hoorah!… was re-imagine to instead say, “the Little One (Name) stops to tell a story…” and then each amigue one by one shared a story.
Rey teaches Wendy about a “Runker that is very jacture. It’s very sharp!” Ten mucho cuidado witch Wendy!!
El “Que Paso” for grown-ups?
The other day I was at a gala for Behind the Book, my host introduced me as “Eva, she went to Burning Man last year.” I was immediately a little embarrassed. I ran through all the ways in which I would have preferred to be described: founder of a bilingual preschool, working hard to lift a cultural/community center, mother of a teen, artists, embroiderer, Spanish, Catalana… so many choices before (shhh!) Burner (which I by the way am not since I only went once under near perfect conditions and will likely never go again), but then an individual at the table asked me a question: “Did you like it?” Yes, I loved it. I loved the build, the incredibly strenuous conditions we endured to put up our art camp, the camaraderie and connectedness I felt with my friend Carles (he is the person who invited me to help build his vision). I remembered how often I would say things like “Burning Man is Mi Casita for adults” and “Mi Casita is the Burning Man for kids.” I am not a Burner, but there is an element of the founding spirit (or as they call it.. the principles) that speaks to me and a commitment to trouble-solving that moves me. Perhaps it was having my friend Carles there, but this LAB really reminded me of that feeling. Talking to Carles after the LAB reminded me that our time there was a chance for us to also live as adults what it is like to have a provocation and go with it. Some parts take planning, some parts take guidance from people who know more, but other parts take deep listening to fresh ideas, observing, patience, a lot of the process takes creativity, an open mind, hard work, so much movement, climbing, sliding, building, re-building, planting seeds, moving soil (or dust), drawing, eating, meeting, introducing, loving, crying, getting angry, recovering, resting, and coming back for more.
