The Memory Project: Storytelling through visual arts, theater & puppetry

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center HOME Project Blog 22 1/27/2022 Our last class for this project and we were thrilled to see Julisa back with us. Imaginations were warmed up with a theater game, miming actions for each room of their pop-up book of Home. Some rooms we didn’t make in the book were added such as the laundry, basement, and the garden outside. The variety of actions included exercising and watching T.V in the living room, riding a stationary bike in the bedroom, chopping vegetables in the kitchen, and toweling their back in the bathroom.  Next, they ordered the pages of their book and carefully glued them together ensuring the pages opened the same way. Next, they added another page to the front and the back of the book. They chose two pieces of the same colored paper for the book cover, overlapped them by 1” and glued them along the strip. Listening to music while we worked helped the creative spirit. Glue was placed around the edges of the first page of the book an...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center HOME Project Blog 21 1/20/2022 A chilly day with sleet outside our windows gave us the perfect excuse to do a physical warm up. As we are learning how to make the final page, the bathroom in our pop-up Book of HOME, I thought it might be fun to use our bodies to spell out the letters of “bathroom” in English. Bending, stretching our bodies is a great way to activate our brains and our imaginations. Reviewing homework is a highlight of every class and by so doing our students also share their stories of what the room means to them. Hui Fen made a second bedroom which her fellow students called “the honeymoon”. The window behind the bed opened onto blue skies with gulls flying across and pretty pleated blue curtains made from tissue paper. The yellow closet opened to reveal colorful clothing she’d created. The furniture in Jing Wei’s bedroom was cohesive in design, with matching blue bedside tables and a striped bedhead. Her large family photo above th...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center HOME Project Blog 20 1/13/2022 Our seniors’ pop-up Home pages are so ingenious. We enjoy seeing how they take the skills we have taught and use them to invent new ways of doing. As teachers it is important to recognize prior learning and experience, but also acknowledge how much we learn from our students. WeChat is a very useful platform allowing them to share their work and hence learn from and inspire each other.  Our warmup was a scavenger hunt where the leader took it in turns to ask the group to find 3 objects. We had a lot of fun scrambling around our homes looking for disparate things such as a shoe, chopsticks, glasses case and a book. Next, we reviewed the kitchen pop-up page they finished for homework.  Hui Fen meticulously made panels on the doors of the cabinets with complimentary colored cardstock. The internal shelves were created using strips of colored cardstock. Jing Wei realistically made a microwave which she glued below...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center HOME Project Blog 19 1/06/2022 Our first class of the New Year! What will 2022 bring for us all? We wish good health, continued creativity, and joy. It was also Pun’s birthday - sort of. It seems her mother made a mistake when she registered Pun’s birth because she had so many children, 7, she couldn’t remember the actual date. Pun told us she doesn’t celebrate personally but remembers her mother and how she suffered in childbirth. Bensonhurst does celebrate its members birthdays, but monthly. Surprisingly today was also registered as  Hui Fen’s birthday but was not the actual date of her birth according to the Chinese calendar. She said it was too difficult to explain her actual birthday to US authorities on her arrival. I also learnt how to say Happy Birthday and Happy New Year in Cantonese. I found it quite difficult as the sounds are so similar to my ear. In today’s lesson they learnt how to make their kitchen appliances appear 3D by adding...