Session 1

Instructions were to make a piece of paper stand up.

Students solutions were:

to curve – landscape format

to fold (once) portrait format

to fold once landscape format

to fold twice – this created an inside and an outside

to concertina

It would be good to start a collection of words for actions with paper

It would be nice to see some photos of these structures on the class blog

Students worked in teams of 3 & 4 Teams were given the task to build the tallest structure using their “standing” paper

Ravens, Dynamites Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Explosions, Rapunzels Tyre and Rolling Stones competed to make structures from 41 cms to 64 cms high.

{Class please correct me if these names are a bit off, sound isn’t the clearest at my end – I am especially confused by Rapunzels tyre ????}

I wonder – can we get any higher than 64 cms with four A4 pieces of paper?

We looked at Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome and found diamonds

(and other shapes…..)

We made Equilateral Triangles out of A4 paper

We joined them together to make hexagons and we joined the hexagons to make a bigger shape

We created a paper landscape with our structures.

The children told me about Cave Hill, Napoleon’s Nose and a Sleeping Giant who could well have been the inspiration for Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift’s story about Lilliput. One boy had an adventure with briars that left scars all over his hands. I was told about plane crashes, volcanoes and a hidden store of diamonds at its centre.

It’s interesting that the shape of the mouth of the Hill’s largest cave is a hexagon…. I wonder ….?

The children showed me pictures they had made including, a fabulous landscape with a darkening sky and a cave where the light was shining from inside, rather than the dark mouth I expected. All very intriguing….

Perhaps we can see some of these pictures on the class blog?

Altogether a fabulous morning.

I am struggling still with the technology, I can take snapshots of the classroom but the class are having trouble taking snaps from their end, our whiteboard builds up quickly with layers of images and I haven’t got to grips with saving whiteboards and creating new ones. Sometimes Tony and I end up battling with each other moving stuff around and deleting to find space or hunt down an image. It is a strange sense of removal to be working virtually, my hands in my studio and to be seeing things at a removal from a single perspective children come and go from the screen I see wide shots and flurries of activities, it’s all a bit of a blur, but I can sense the excitement.

STUDIO

I have started growing crystals in my studio: