As the YMCA summer camp ends and school begins, it is time to review what we have accomplished this summer and what happens next. The YMCA program started with an evaluation of what kids knew about the river. Most agreed it was dirty, had fish including sharks and boating was fun. We started learning about the river by following the stream behind the Y looking for storm drains as we walked to the Katy bridge to see the great Missouri River. For the next few weeks we explored the creek and the cattail wetlands behind the Y using nets and plastic magnifying tools provided by the Missouri Department of Conservations Wetland trunk. Kids discovered all sorts of life in and around the water. On the fourth week we played with recycled and found objects as fun art materials. Many kids chose to illustrate water themes ranging from storm drains made with colorful straws to a variety of wildlife. When learning about the wetlands, students were shown an educational piece that illustrated heavy metal pollution from cities with little red dots and explained how cattails filter the water by soaking up these little red dots. One person made a cattail out of bottle caps and and as he put little red beads in the bottle caps he proudly explained that the red beads were the pollution the cattail was soaking up. Our last project was working with the mud that makes wetlands possible, clay. Some kids actually made buildings that will be used in our final sculpture. At the end of the summer, using the same evaluation as the first day, when asked what the kids knew about the Missouri River, results included storm drains, keeping trash out of the river and lots of wildlife besides fish including tadpoles, crawdads, and water spiders.
Friday open studios at the CCBC were fun, but not very well attended. Consensus is that Fridays evenings just have too many other things happening.
In conclusion, I feel the summer YMCA Summer Camp Program was successful in connecting the youth to the river in a fun way. Over the summer eight community volunteers helped on the YMCA Mondays including 1 eighth grader and 3 high school students who came every week. The attempts at collaboration within the community thru the CCBC open Fridays was not as successful. A new approach will be to invite specific groups of people or organizations to participate in workshops at Holly's studio with dates and times to be arranged in accordance with the participants. Through the YMCA program, CCBC Fridays and word of mouth several very artistic youth have been identified who will also be invited to continue working on the art project.
Now I am excited to have a wall in my studio dedicated to this project and and looking forward to have some time with the artistic muses... keep you posted.
Friday open studios at the CCBC were fun, but not very well attended. Consensus is that Fridays evenings just have too many other things happening.
In conclusion, I feel the summer YMCA Summer Camp Program was successful in connecting the youth to the river in a fun way. Over the summer eight community volunteers helped on the YMCA Mondays including 1 eighth grader and 3 high school students who came every week. The attempts at collaboration within the community thru the CCBC open Fridays was not as successful. A new approach will be to invite specific groups of people or organizations to participate in workshops at Holly's studio with dates and times to be arranged in accordance with the participants. Through the YMCA program, CCBC Fridays and word of mouth several very artistic youth have been identified who will also be invited to continue working on the art project.
Now I am excited to have a wall in my studio dedicated to this project and and looking forward to have some time with the artistic muses... keep you posted.
RSS Feed
