Is that a bird or a plate?

John Graham Primary was abuzz on Saturday August 20, as fifty-three teachers arrived to take part in a visual arts workshop to create wetland food chain out of paper plates.
The workshop forms part of the Princess Vlei Forum's Flight of Dreams project for 2016. It was sponsored by the PVF, and facilitated by a team from the Frank Joubert Arts Centre Ibhabhathane Project.
Teachers were taken through a step-by-step demonstration on how to use a paper plate and wax crayons to teach important elements of the visual arts curriculum, including form, line, texture, pattern and colour theory. The coloured plates, along with paper scraps and old magazines, were then transformed into a mobile featuring a bird, fish, and insect as a way of teaching children about wetland birds and food chains. The lesson covered outcomes from both the Arts and Culture and Life Sciences curricula.
Teachers were also presented with a comprehensive teacher’s package consisting of a workbook with all activities covered in the workshop (and more) as well as full lesson plans. As one teacher remarked, they could go back to the classroom and implement the lesson plans straight away without further preparation. At the end of the workshop there was a lucky draw, and several teachers won art books for their classrooms, or tickets to our fundraiser Remembering the Lux at the Baxter Theatre on September 3. This fundraiser will help to pay for this and other aspects of the programme.
Teachers who attended were invited to participate in other aspects of the Flight of Dreams Project. Mobiles created by the learners can be displayed at an exhibition in the Grassy Park Library later this year, and children can also bring their mobiles to the parade on 24 September. Please contact us if you would like to participate in this project.
The Forum would like to thank the wonderful team from Frank Joubert - Liesl Hartman, Fabian Hatrzenberg and Bev Bradnick, as well as Ms Beverley Johnson for making two beautiful classrooms available at John Graham Primary School.

  

Read more about the flight of dreams 2016