Portrait of a School

cataloguing different kinds of tape (grade 4)

clock (grade 4)

Emergency exit button (grade 5)

Umbrellas

kindergartner's photo of blue

Today is the end of my first week of working with the students of the YMCA Tokyo International School. So far the project is going pretty much as planned, although Mr. Ed (the art teacher) and myself are constantly making adjustments. The basic concept presented to the students was that we are going to try to create a portrait of their school by looking at all of the little mundane things that make up the physical contents of the building. Each child is to document, through drawing or painting, four instances of a specific physical object found in the school, (it's a long list, it includes things like; umbrellas, tape dispensers, pencils, buttons, plants, faucets, chairs, etc.). The assignments were decided upon by group discussion with each class. The project will culminate with each student gluing their four best drawings or paintings, of their assigned subject on a 25x25cm board. All of the boards will be hung together somewhere in the school. I think the results will be pretty interesting. The very small children, kindergarten and 1st grade, are too young to handle the drawing so we gave them cameras and had them shoot a specific shape or color. The results can be very abstract.