HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center HOME Project.21 1/20/2022

 

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 the bed was framed in red. She chose wallpaper to create a colorful floor. Lao Yu very cleverly used the belt of the large teddy bear on the outside of the closet for its closure. She placed a colorful mat in front. Pun created a surreal effect with a 2D chair and a perspective bending painting on the wall. Her bright butterfly motif bedspread set off her bedroom perfectly. 

Ru Ping added a large throw rug across the bed to make the room cozier. Her closet design is very realistic. She added a water bottle on one bedside table and a lamp on the other, both of which are attached with tabs and can be manually lifted when the page is opened. So Sim created two bedrooms. One has yellow bunk beds and a single bed, which represents the bedroom she used to sleep in with her grandchildren. Above the bed is a family photo showing 3 generations, including her own mother who passed away at 103 years. Her current bedroom features a large photo of our 2018 class celebration at Bensonhurst Senior Center. Next to it is a family Christmas photo. On one bedside table is a “life alert” box. Sook Fong’s bedroom is every child’s dream, with a giant poster of a teddy bear and another as a bedspread. Through the window we see a bed of brightly colored sunflowers. 

Stella cleverly engineered her closet and dresser so that the top of each would lift up manually to allow them to lie flat when the page is closed. Susanna also utilized her inventive skills by adding a manually folding railing to the top bunk bed. She used 2 toothpicks to create the ladder to reach the top bunk, and on the floor below she added a fluffy pillow as her brother liked to jump off the top bunk. This is her childhood bedroom. She and her younger brother slept in the bottom bunk while her 2 other brothers slept together in the top. 

Making a mock-up first has become the accepted practice, so everyone followed Spica as she demonstrated making a toilet and cistern and the toilet seat. I showed my bathroom example from “The House that Dad and Mum Built”, which had a 1950’s style pedestal sink. The class tried their hand at this style. Finally, we made the bathtub together. Although both Spica and I shared our example pages, we know from experience that our seniors will take some inspiration but will come up with new and exciting ways to create the unique bathroom pop-up pages.