Bensonhurst Senior Center Blog 3 3/3/22 Flowers & Family Tree

 

Bensonhurst Senior Center

Blog  3  3/3/22

Flowers & Family Tree

A great way to get us all connected at the beginning of class and to warm up our bodies and imagination is through the “Ball of Energy” theater game. The teacher shapes a “ball of energy” and selects a person to throw it to, who is spotlighted. That person catches the “ball”, reshapes it, and nominates another person as the receiver. We had a lot of fun moving the “ball” around the class as it was remade, by rolling it out like dough, stretching it with Tai Chi moves, blowing on it, juggling the ball, and making it longer, flatter, and hotter. Hui Fen’s granddaughter, Sharon, was keen to join our class, adding her smiling face to the group. As Hong is on vacation for the week, we were hosted by Fanny at Bensonhurst Senior Center.

Our seniors shared their terrific sketches of a tree; Hui Fen added birds, Jing Wei, bird -houses, Julisa created a 3D effect with shading, Lao Yu’s branches were intricately drawn, Pun drew a grid pattern on the trunk, Ru Ping drew a squirrel and a cat climbing the tree, So Sim crocheted beautiful flowers, Sook Fong added clouds amongst the top branches, Stella declared “Spring is coming!” with colorful birds, and Susanna drew 2 recliners below her palm trees, possibly dreaming of warmer climes.

They were excited to see their photos on the ornaments and so prepared a dish of water, a cloth, Mod Podge, and a brush. Wetting the cloth, they applied this to the back of the photo and then carefully rubbed the paper away to reveal the image underneath. This process is prone to errors and the best way to learn how to do something is by making mistakes. A couple of our students were disappointed that they rubbed off some of their image, however Julisa experimented by soaking the ornament and scraping the remaining paper off using the edge of scissors. She will now be able to reuse the ornament with a new image.

Another trick we learned through doing was that even if the image appears to have a very thin layer of paper over it, by painting Mod Podge over the top to seal it, the image will appear clear. What was learnt here is to not rub the photo so much that you erase part of the photo. It was a painstaking lesson, and much patience was needed. Fortunately, our ladies have both in spades! 

Once dried they turned the ornament over, selected a flower, or another photo and repeated the process learnt last week of applying Mod Podge evenly to the photo side of the paper, centering then gluing it onto the ornament. We were so involved in our class that we continued for a further 10 minutes and even as we said our goodbyes some students were still diligently working on their project.

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