Bensonhurst Senior Center Blog 9 4/14/22 Flowers & Family Tree

 

Bensonhurst Senior Center

Blog  9  4/14/22

Flowers & Family Tree

Keeping physically active is not a problem for our wonderful seniors, so we incorporated a movement activity with partnering for this morning’s warm up. “On the Nose” requires a leader and partner and for everyone to stand. The leader can only move her hand and the follower must imagine there is a string attached directly from their nose to the leader’s hand. The leader tries to make the follower move in ways they haven’t seen before. A couple of our brave seniors took the lead and had us all following, bending our bodies in line with our nose’s lead!

As usual our students excelled in creating their sunflower wall hangings and we screen shared their work for comment. Jing Wei placed a photo of her daughter inside a red heart, balanced within wide stripes of complimentary colored and textured paper. Her message is written across bold yellow, softened by red scalloped edging. Julisa created a giant birthday card with 8 places for messages devoted with her paper flowers and tiny love hearts. Scattered across the board are family photos and her sunflower and chrysanthemum compliment opposing corners. After creating her initial wall hanging, Lao Yu improved her design by adding a blue swirl which helped to focus her family photo on an ornament. It was complemented by two paper roses, the red of the second she used again in tiny flowers with yellow centers. 

It is always a pleasure to receive Miu’s homework as she is still unable to join our class in person. She also reworked her original design by simplifying the images and adding a large recycled green paper stem to her orange sunflower bisecting the wall hanging. This helped to focus her circular photo which she complemented with red love hearts in which she placed her message. Pun’s humor was evident in her piece, which featured a family photo placed on egg-shaped newsprint from which 2 wings carried her message, “Time Flies”. Colorful dots drew the eye upwards toward her orange sunflower. Ru Ping simplified her original piece by removing 2 small images of birds and replacing them with a larger flower image. She centered her circular family photo, which she glued to a larger circle of paper taken from a book to add extra emphasis. Other flower images flank her message. So Sim honored the memory of passed family members by adding their photos on a red textured background. Her memorial was completed with the sunflower in the corner and the message in the other. So Sim did not disappoint us and also crocheted sunflowers!

Sook Fong also made 2 wall hangings, the first to honor her mother, by gluing her photo inside a pink heart and outlining it with red and blue. This she centered and added flower images below angled to draw our focus. Her orange sunflower completed the wall hanging and she added blue veined leaves. Her second piece is covered in blue paper and onto which she has added a photo of her and her husband inside a red paper circle, with a crescent moon cut out. Angled below is a family photo from which green, red and orange leaves protrude. Stella’s charming wall hanging honors her grandson, “My Sweet Heart”, whose adorable face is surrounded by bright yellow rays. This works well on the green background she chose, complemented with colorful love hearts and a display of flowers and butterfly images. On her orange sunflower which adorns the corner of the wall hanging, she added a blue tassel. Susanna’s geometric design is eye c watching and offsets her message written on newsprint. The small yellow circle of color inside this design works well with the large red sunflower centered below and the 2 smaller green paper flowers on either side. 

We finished the chrysanthemum we began last week and were thrilled at our students’ inventiveness and creativity; Pun even made a multicolored blue flower. Our final project is making a bridal bouquet using paper. Spica demonstrated how to make individual petals using paper from a printed book and colored paper.  Lao Yu surprised by making her petals from a mailing advertisement. No doubt their creations will be as spectacular as always!