Extended Day Recycled Art Project, Part One

Earth Day is coming up on April 22nd, and we are getting excited!

One of the ways that our Extended Day community is celebrating this wonderful holiday is by submitting an entry for a recycled art show. BUT the show is not at AFS. Our project is going to be shown at Whole Foods Market in Jenkintown! Whole Foods has made this show an annual event, and we were delighted to find out that we could participate in such an exciting event.

First through Fourth graders in Extended Day began this project on Thursday by taking a trip to the dumpster that sits outside AFS theater. They didn't talk about why they were sorting through these discarded items, they simply started to observe things that stood out and caught their interest. This dumpster is a gold mine of materials that we will be able to use for this project because the theater is working hard on creating sets and props for both the Middle and Upper School plays.

On Friday, friends came together as a whole group (Pre-K through Fifth grade) and were presented with the idea of of the Whole Foods Recycled Art Show. After we all agreed that we wanted to participate, we dove right into coming up with ideas on what our project could turn out to be. Some ideas that came out of our conversation included creating a puffer fish, a robot, creating the word "hope", an underwater ocean scene, a giant elephant, and Dr. Seuss inspired creations (especially since Friday was the good Doctor's birthday) such the Cat in the Hat, the Cat in the Hat Robot, the Cat in the Hat's Hat with various things out of the brim, and more.

We furthered our discussion and planning today by pulling out the materials that the students chose from the theater dumpster on Thursday, and starting to discuss ideas of what we could create using these items. The main ideas that were again brought up were an elephant, more puffer fish and other undersea creatures, the Cat in the Hat and other Dr. Seuss characters (this time including the Lorax). A new idea was also presented-creating a 3-D movie scene that is interactive: you need to look through a viewing area, or "glasses", to see the movie scene. After a vote, this movie scene was what we decided to create.

This then begged the question... what would our movie scene be about? After more sharing of ideas, it was clear that a Dr. Seuss interest had emerged.

We will be continuing this project on a daily basis for the next month, and we look forward to sharing our process with you!