For this session I travelled to Crossmaglen to make a real visit. It was lovely to re-connect with Mrs Crummy and the children! The teacher and I had planned for new explorations taking the idea of the packaged Christmas tree  as a starting point. So this session was all about wrapping!

We began by making a big circle and playing a game of pass the parcel….

(I had prepared 3 wrapped objects for this) At first we stood and looked at the shapes to see if we could guess what was in the parcel! Some interesting ideas were offered. A hat… socks etc

      

 

Now it was time to try wrapping something ourselves. We had all brought an object small enough to wrap on our desks. We used heavy patterned paper, tape and string. We took care to fold and crease our paper so our object was covered up and then we secured it with tape and then string. Look at the great work by the children!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The children began to get very enthusiastic about wrapping and before break bell had rung there had already been suggestions about wrapping the school! At this point, I introduced the work of artists CHRISTO and JEANNE – CLAUDE.

They are internationally renowned artists who together over many years have planned and realised many large scale art projects such as the wrapping of whole buildings and structures, for example The Reichstag (German Parliament building) in Berlin and Pont-Neuf in Paris and such projects as the wrapping of a coastline in Australia and the installation of a 39.4 kilometre Running fence across Sonoma and Marin County, California, USA.

We had the good fortune to have the opportunity to look at some books about the work of these artists and to research their projects online.

http://christojeanneclaude.net

Here some of the boys browse books on the work of the artists:

 

There was great interest in what they saw. One of the books “Christo: Wrapped Walkways” was especially interesting because we discovered that Christo had proposed to wrap a walkway in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin in 1977! However, permission had not been granted. A similar project had been realised in Kansas Missouri, USA and the book showed the plans and details and even a sample of the fabric used for the wrapping had been included. This was of great interest to us because the last time we met online we had planned, designed and made a box for our shoe.

Although what we had done was small scale, the imagination of the children was indeed large-scale! What is important is the ambition and imagination that we could harness!

We took inspiration from these art projects and decided to wrap something much larger than the objects on our desks. The children quickly decided that they would wrap a desk and a chair! Not any chair, but the TEACHER’s chair!

The children worked in two groups and got to work very quickly!

 

THE DESK

 

 

 

 

THE TEACHER’S CHAIR

 

 

It was an extraordinary period of time. There was total collaboration to pass rolls of paper around the object, to pass and cut tape and place securely. There was no argument only serious focus on the very exciting task of wrapping the object.

Once wrapped, the children intuitively set about decorating the wrapped object:

 

 

Every part of the chair and table had been considered:

 

Mrs Crummy had been working with the children wrapping the table so when she was invited to look at the wrapped chair, the children encouraged her to try and sit in it…..

 

Within seconds the children had begun wrapping her in the chair! Mrs Crummy  was going nowhere fast!

It took a little time before the excitement of this activity had died down so I suggested the children draw the wrapped objects. Here’s some of the drawings!

Thank you Mrs Crummy for the wonderful day and the children for all the focus and enthusiasm. There are very many ideas that might spring from all this and so now time to think……..