Bensonhurst Senior Center Blog 2 2/24/22 Flowers & Family Tree

 

Bensonhurst Senior Center

Blog  2 2/24/22

Flowers & Family Tree

WeChat is a great vehicle for sharing students’ work and we were thrilled to see their sketches of flowers. Some students went further and colored their drawings creating beautiful displays of flowers they have growing in their homes and gardens. 

As we will be focusing on family portraits today, I thought it might be fun to create some “photos” ourselves in the form of frozen moments. We imagined moments in life, such as lifting our grandchild to see the lion dance, changing a smelly diaper, taking our child to school for the first time and enacting each, we froze when we heard the word “flash”! Not only were their bodies posed in action, but each person’s face reflected how they felt at that moment. 

To begin ornament making, our seniors rummaged in their bag of supplies for the wooden ornaments, Mod Podge, a brush and found a paper plate, a pencil, and their family photos. After selecting the photo, they would like to hang on their family tree, they placed it on the ornament and using the pencil, marked it out. Next, they cut out the photo and applied Mod Podge evenly over the photo, then glued it carefully to the ornament making sure to smooth it out with their fingers. We will leave these to dry and next week will reveal the photo. 


Images of trees were shared as they discussed the basic elements of trunk and branches and commented on the shape, width, direction, and number of boughs. They used their sketchbooks to draw another tree, copying from the screen share. Gathering newspaper and masking tape, they shaped the newsprint into branches and taped it. By this method they created a few different shaped branches which they taped together. For homework they will make more branches ready for next week when we will teach them how to make the trunk and add all the boughs.


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