The young artists of Young Scholars have made tremendous progress in last three meetings with the mural.
To start out, students were given flag drawings and they colored them with crayons. We set a piece of transparent sticky paper with sticky side up on top of the crayon colored picture of the flags. Students set the appropriate color tiles on the sticky paper following the lines on the flag drawing pattern showing through the sticky paper. I expected that students may take longer, however they caught on rather quickly. Mrs Ayata took care of details during these sessions and led some students to finish the flags on the sticky paper.
Frankly the students surprised me with the speed and diligence they worked with. I found that if we gave students good directions and then gave them the freedom to do what they wanted to, they tended to be more accurate and took responsibility for their work. This was evident, when Allison created pattern with small tiles and big tiles as she completed her flag. London at first paid no attention to the directions, however when I set the flag pattern and tiles in front of her she loved putting tiles on and was the last one to leave the room. Mary and her friends worked collaboratively and made the flags with absolute straight lines. I am impressed with that.
This week we only had one large group. I decided it was time to show them how to cut tiles. Cutting tiles takes hand strength and we needed more than one person (me) to cut the tiles. So I followed the one-room-school-house strategy. Teach the older ones and they will help out by cutting the tiles for the younger ones. In less than five minutes, the older girls got warmed up to it. Allison and other two girls cut the tiles for themselves. Jeda surprised me by taking a cardboard box on her lap and cut the tiles for others. It just came to her so naturally. I can comfortably say she was my star tile cutter.
In the front of the room, two boys, Luke and Reeves both were extremely diligent as I heard them talk, "I love this club, we have to be really accurate in making these flags, we do not want our flag to be crooked" My answer to them was, "I love this club too." Luke is also going to bring me a picture of a robot to incorporate in the mural. ;)
The flags that are completed by the students, I took them home and placed them on the mural. I would need to tweak them when I glue them but for now I think we have a wonderful start on this mural and I couldn't ask for any better young artists than what I have. Again, my thanks to Mrs. Ayata for demanding perfection from the students and Mrs. Khan for stopping by and keeping the morale going, and Mr. Ayata for taking pictures. So far I wouldn't change a thing.
The surface that I am building this mural on, is Wedi-board as shown in the picture. Wedi-board is super light and has cementitious material on both sides which is strong for glass tiles and water proof for outdoors. Because this is a 21 Sq feet piece, for durability I doubled the wediboard and added a plywood frame behind it.
Anju Jolly
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