Rockstar earnestly trying to rapidfire-explain a ton of his school artwork, poetry, costume design, clay making, something they made on the computers, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc in the one session
Rockstar’s year had turned their classrooms into galleries that were open for a total of 45 minutes on a week day for the rest of the school to view. Before they need all their tables and chairs and exhibit boards and things back to get on with “regular” school/class activities, I suppose. (As in, the whole This No Biggie attitude gave me the impression this level of effort is business as usual – which is what pretty much blew me away because of the level of effort that I see to have gone in to this. To Me This Is Biggie :D)
Rockstar’s is a big school and there always seems to be something going on, each year and class have little shows – including in Putonghua, concerts, bake sales, assemblies, science experiments, units of inquiry, field trips, sports and games and music and ICT…… which means a dynamic constantly moving, changing, growing melting pot of activities, stimulation, interaction, recycling and sharing opportunities of resources available, ample appreciative audiences among fellow Kennedy kids of different years and classes…..
One nice touch is that as the different years and classes mill around the exhibits, they are given post-its to leave encouragements and appreciative comments on other kids’ exhibits of their choosing… Rockstar had 2 or 3 like most other kids, and you can j-ust see one of the notes on the left of the pic above, but I think the erm, exhibiting artists keep up their precious notes quite fast 😀
Y’know, in various places of Cyberport and what-not you see all these quiet exhibits of kids’ work or even adults’ fashion designs for graduating shows out of design school – they’re there for weeks on end, and…… I don’t know, there’s way, way less to see. I really could barely look at any other child’s work except in our immediate vicinity in the last 2 minutes or something (yes I rushed the Miss home by cab halfway, but then we’d got there right on the dot when they opened the class)
They’re watching video footage of Rockstar and his classmates expressing themselves through free dance moves… After a choreographer teaches them some basics, I think Rockstar came home one day and said…
(If I recall correctly these paper men things were about proportions and measurements – they use different sizes from full to half and quarter sizes to get some number sense I think it was…)
“That’s my Ko-ko”: Note the proud little hand holding Rockstar’s hand
“That’s How I Inspire My Ko-ko” 😀 Proud Little Hand’s claim to fame… 😛
(Remember Rockstar’s little homework assignment which was a tiny part of this entire thing:)
So for e.g. this is kept in Rockstar’s folio… Yes they have whole separate folios, not counting all the regular reading/ writing and math and chinese etc…
The kids explored expressing themselves via various mediums – a range of materials, costume design (what’s practical tempering the creative in this case), a range of emotions and the colors, words, sounds, lines and shapes, among others, that are used to portray them or even magnify their effect…
Clay sculpture and word portrait (Rockstar’s sculpture is – wonder of wonders – to do with Minecraft weaponry)
Rockstar says he and his friends would select a couple emotions to portray (his were anger and confidence – unfortunately, his friends then act out the emotions for him which means I would end up putting other kids’ pictures up without permission, so I had to omit… A real pity because Rockstar’s 3 friends who acted out “confidence” for his piece looked really cool with the poses and facial expressions…
So unfortunately I have to post an e.g. with Rockstar’s standard “happy” face (which I can tell is different from his genuinely happy face; his put-on happy face we like to dub The Happy Puppy :D):
He’s acting out the emotion “Happy” for his friend’s poem…
How do you explain colour to a blind person?
Read the words – pretty good, right? How we express say, Happiness – “happy colours” enhanced by the other senses (your favourite tastes, smells, and touch sensations – and for “Confidence” they did more body language)… I took this e.g. cos it’s one with Rockstar’s face… The words however are not written by him; his friend who wrote it I understand is at least trilingual (also not uncommon – for e.g. they might study English and Chinese in school, and then also say, speak Korean or Japanese or French or etc at home… I mention because I can imagine how much work goes into learning everything…)
(And btw any misspellings are corrected separately, in the actual writing books… )
30 kids to a class, 5 classes a year (someone correct me if I’m wrong) – every child has an exhibit like this ok
So you get to your child’s classroom, other toddler child in tow because she has music class in 20 minutes, and….. yup, we’re not making it to music class today. Then out of the throng of Kennedy kids milling about comes Rockstar’s various buddies (most of whom also have siblings) who are all “Oh! Little kid! So cute so cute” and Rockstar proudly introduces his star-struck sister as being able to sing Months of the Year and I don’t know how many new faces and recitals 15 minutes later she crashes.
This is her KO-ing on the short cab ride back
So I rush now-unconscious Miss home and rush back to catch as much more of this as I can.. Rockstar carries on his rapid-fire narrations like I never left… In same Post-it Appreciation Leaving vein, Rockstar would zero in on various friends’ exhibits and why he especially liked their work. It’s another nice thing that I hope I describe well enough, re their learning community – amongst themselves, the kids would have been encouraged to well, encourage one another and acknowledge their friends’ good work. Which is kinda nice 🙂
ps: Upon reaching home later, we discover the Miss, normally a fairly light sleeper, never stirred for 2 hours (she hasn’t done that in absolutely ages – most days she doesn’t even nap, now…)
