Bensonhurst Senior Center Blog 10 4/21/22 Flowers & Family Tree

 

Bensonhurst Senior Center

Blog  10  4/21/22

Flowers & Family Tree

Did you know there are specific warm up exercises for gamers? Well, many of them are just the ticket for our students who are using their fingers, hands, and wrists to create beautiful folding paper art. We began with opposition finger taps then finger abductions with closed and open fingers. We then put our palms together and separated our fingers followed by single finger circles. This is a challenging exercise, and everyone does what she can at her own pace. Carpal tunnel is a painful condition so to help avoid this we practiced a carpal squeeze activity with wide palm extension. Finally, we exercised our wrists.

This is the final class of our “Flowers & Family Tree” program, so we wanted to ensure the bouquet was completed. Our students made 6 flowers, each with 5 petals, for homework and now glued each flower together. Next, they threaded a bead onto the wire and poked it through the center of each flower. The wires were twisted together. After securing with masking tape, newspaper was wrapped around, and finally decorative paper tied with a ribbon finished the bouquet.

Sook Fong used printed paper to create her flowers, decorated in red, while Stella chose not to embellish the flowers’ edges. Pun created a multi-colored bouquet using green and red petals for the same flower. Ru Ping’s bouquet had pretty purple beads in the center wrapped in silver toile. Lao Yu’s bouquet featured red, blue, yellow, and orange flowers. Jing Wei also opted for multicolor choosing pink, purple, green, red, and white paper to make her flowers. Susanna chose variations in red for her flowers and substituted the beads with brightly colored buttons creating a gorgeous visual effect. Hui Fen used flexible plastic garden wire instead of metal wire inside her flowers and Pun’s husband came to the rescue and found something suitable for her to use as she didn’t have the wires. So Sim’s multicolored bouquet had brown, pink and printed paper flowers. She didn’t disappoint and showed us the latest flowers she was crocheting. 

Sharing stories is integral to our practice and our students dropped their wedding photos into WeChat. We screen shared them and learnt that Sook Fong’s daughter, who now has 2 grown sons, was married in 1977 and her son in 1990, both in Chinatown. Their wedding photos featured Sook Fong looking very elegant. Lao Yu also shared her daughter’s wedding photo, which also featured her 2 sons. So Sim held up wedding photos in which her daughter was the bridesmaid. Miu, who cannot attend class in person, shared her wedding photo in a park. The 4 children surrounding her, and her husband are children who were playing in the park and wanted to join the happy couple in the photo. 

Stella’s photo was of her niece as the bride and her daughter as the bridesmaid. She now babysits her daughter’s child! Ru Ping was married in 1983 and in her beautiful wedding photo she holds a bouquet of red roses. Her roses in her husband’s boutonniere match the flowers in her hair. Susanna’s long bouquet of pink roses was made by a friend. Jing Wei, married in 1975 did not have a wedding photo but she shared their wedding anniversary photos from 2013 featuring them standing under a charming floral arbor made by a friend. Pun was too thin, and her wedding dress didn’t fit snugly so the photographer pinned it together at the back for her photo. Her husband’s baby face had some asking, “Is that your son?” to which Pun replied, “No, I’m his grandma”. 

We are constantly impressed with the creativity of our students. They have challenged themselves, each other, and us as teachers, producing work of the highest quality and originality. It’s an honor and a privilege to work with them and hear their stories.