Art, Theatre and Photography Camp 2016. Done!

I love Art, Theatre and Photography Camp. 

It is a hard four days, but so worth it! The kids have a great time and the parents are always amazed at what we are able to produce from the campers in such a short amount of time.

This year's theme was "Broadway Battle."

We had 116 campers spread out over a morning session and an afternoon session. That is a LOT of kids. Especially when close to 30 of those kids are 3 and 4 years old! 

We also have a dozen or more teenage volunteers. We couldn't run the program without them, but they add a level of "drama" to the camp as well. :)

Here is a panorama right before we started the production. All of those orange shirts... yeah, that's a lot of bodies to manage!

Over the four days, I probably took close to a thousand pictures. No kidding.

Below are a few of the highlights from the art portion of camp!

I LOVED working with the kids on their paintings. Given that they had only about 45 minutes total to work on them, I think they did great! Their paintings were done over three days.

(Sidenote.. Bleeding Tissue paper is the WAY TO GO if you want a really cool, cheap and easy background for a watercolor painting!)

We also screenprinted. Of course we did. I guess that's my signature event! It is messy and crazy and the kids LOVE it.

Look at Kylie's concentration. The memories.

And how can Lexi be this big? 

They also made scratch art. One of the workers mentioned that he couldn't believe that the kids were willingly without a fuss painting black over their drawings and "ruining" them. I explained that the kids have learned over the years to go with the flow! 

(Sidenote.. making your own scratch art is fun and messy. scratching off the black is REALLY messy..)

We also did weaving. I changed to weaving with pipe cleaners this year. Less mess. And they can create a 3d weaving project. It was really fun!

And there you have it.

Another year complete. My take away this year is the realization that one of my goals for the kids is the gift of artistic surprise and to be willing to experience new things. My goal each year is to push the campers out of their comfort zone and force them in a fun way to try new things. Even if it means utter failure in a project. I try to get them to understand that the PROCESS is the goal, NOT the product!

This isn't an easy task. These kids expect their work to be perfect. They are not used to being told that "failure" is actually a win. And this is the reason we have to have events like this camp. So much of our kids lives are wrapped up in "doing things right" and working toward a perfect product. This mindset ends up freezing the kids mid-project and I have to work with them to just keep going. You would not believe how many projects are thrown in the trash as soon as camp is over, not by the parents, but by the kids. Sadly, they have bought into the lie that unless it is perfect, they don't want it. And I'm talking about 4 year olds!! Ouch.

So my gift to the campers is the opportunity to explore and create in a safe place that is not tied to a test a grade or an expectation. My mantra that I say over and over is the only failure is refusing to try.

And I know it's working. You just have to look at these kids faces!

Want to see more photos? Check us out on facebook. https://www.facebook.com/artandtheatrecamp/

Another Successful Camp!

Final Recap for 2015 Art, Theatre and Photography Camp!

With not a minute to spare and with the help of my incredible student volunteer Hannah, we pulled the second load of still warm pieces out of the kiln so that campers could take their clay home after the performance. The last thing I wanted was to have to track down campers to get them their clay pieces!!

The project had issues.. but on the whole, how can I be bummed about ceramics created by the campers! If I do a project like this again, I don't know that I will use terracotta. Anyway. as you can see, there were some cool parts of each kids pieces, but the colors were too muted. I need to use vibrant glaze with kids!

Here is a close up of the pieces that Kylie and Lexi created.  The "plaques" were for the kids to put their pictures on.. (we ran out of time..) So we just sent the ceramic piece and their group picture home separate.

How fun is that!  

Anyway, here is what Kylie and Lexi's samples look like fired. This is one case were the more glaze the better!

(I think this is what I will do next year... super simple, roll your slab, decorate it, put your name and date on it and load it with glaze..) 

Anyway,

Here are a few pictures from the last day of camp.

We bound sketchbooks and autograph books. (big hit.. but they kept pulling the pages out of the binding.. gonna have to work on that for next year.)

 

We finished the guitar watercolor paintings. Some of the campers left their paintings simple, others were happy to go that next step and make it more abstract.

 

We signed the autograph books. This was so much fun! The kids LOVED it!

And we showed off our week's work!

Wow. This is that moment when I see the fruits of my labor from the week!

In their art rotations they created a ceramics piece, screen printed, worked with charcoal, drew with watercolor pencils, painted, and bound a book. In a 40 minute segment over four days!

 

Wow!

 

And here are a few pictures of the performance.  104 campers makes for a full stage.

And there you have it. We have already started on 2016 camp. (and we already have people wanting to register! wow!!)

Art Camp Week

If you have been around my blog over the last few years, you know that art camp week is a crazy week in my household.

This year has been no different. (Well, add summer grad school to the mix.)

In fact, we have the most campers we have ever had. whew.  We are AT capacity!

Here are a few pictures of the kids in action.

For new visitors, I'll give you a run down. The kids come to camp and participate in either photography or art/theatre. If the kids want to do both, they do both the morning and afternoon session. This year, we have 14 all day campers.

We take PreK (fully potty-trained 3 years old) up to 6th grade for art/theatre and 4th grade-8th grade in photography.

We have a total of 104 campers!

The art/theatre kids have 3 rotations each day. Art, acting, and set/props.

On the first day I had the kids make terracotta plaques. We were so busy I forgot to take pictures in action. Thankfully a local reporter came and got some great pictures! Thanks The Flash Today!

And they even got a picture of me in action! Cool.

Here are some of the finished pieces. Nope, not fine art, but the campers had a great time and they learned a lot about clay and the glazing, firing process. I have to count that as a successful project even if I'm not necessarily in love with the product.

We also did the first step for abstract watercolor paintings.

On day 2, the campers continued to work on their watercolor paintings. I think this was the most successful project in terms of art. But it has taken the longest.

Day 3 was my nightmare. We screen printed AND tie dyed.. both in one day. CRAZY! (and will not do that again!)

Here we are screenprinting. 

The really cool thing is that our repeat campers LOVE screen printing and they remember how to do it. In fact, one little girl told me yesterday that she still has the picture of the two of us screen printing and that it was one of her favorite things to do. :)

And we tie dyed.. 104 camper shirts plus workers. oh my.

You can't even imagine the mess. 

Or the staining on my hands from working with fabric ink all day.

But today is day 4. And that means wrapping up all the art projects for me and the kids will practice their show.  One combined performance this afternoon and another year will be complete.

It's a hard week, but these kids love camp.

Art, Theatre and Photography Camp Wrap Up

Art, Theatre and Photography Camp was a last week. This week I have recovered. So I'm ready to share some of the highlights from the week.

It was a great week and the kids had a wonderful time. 

This is pretty much a photo dump on this post, but I'm going to go over the highlight art project in my next post.  (The oil pastel and acrylic resist color wheel!)

It's always fun to create a banner with hand prints!

Neon hand prints are even better!

The first day I had the kids make insects from clay and wire. They LOVED it! But then who doesn't love clay!! 

Sculpture was a great first day project as it got everyone involved immediately and was good for all ages.  Some of the campers had time to make multiple insects and were happily surprised that we let them!

Here is one of the finished insects! (We didn't really paint until Thursday as they had to dry..)

On the second day, I had the campers create insects from their names. I printed out their names on a white piece of paper and then they used that to write their name in oil pastel on a transparency. Then they transfered the mirror image onto the other side of the transparency. Once the names were completed, they created an insect from their imagination.

 

even the volunteers wanted to make an insect name!

And the finished projects.

On Wednesday, we made coffee filter flowers and watercolor paintings. 

On Thursday, we screen printed bags! I was worried about how it would turn out as it was so humid and raining, but the clumpy paint was perfect!!  65 bags screened and not a bad one!!

There is something so gratifying about screen printing with kids. It's like magic to them. And for the campers that were there for the third year in a row, they asked about screen printing from day one! I was very glad to not screen their shirts.. but I enjoyed teaching them to screen print without the pressure of needing the outcome to be perfect. But as it turned out, all of the bags looked great!

Friday came quickly and I wanted to finish the week with one last "real" art project. Granted, the kids created sculpture, used oil pastel, acrylic paints, watercolor and learned all kinds of stuff.. but I wanted something that parents could look at and say.. that's a "real" art project! 

So the kids created an oil pastel/acrylic resist color wheel. It was messy and a lot of work.. but WORTH it! Here are a couple of pictures. I'll post the process later!

me teaching the volunteers? who knows!! probably, they wanted to make the projects too!

So that's what I did all week. The kids also went to theatre stuff! They worked on a mini-musical called BUGZ, went to rotations for costuming and set and had a ball! Here is Kylie and her group practicing.

And not to be forgotten, Lexi spent half the day in photography camp. She LOVED it!! She took some great pictures. Too bad I don't have copies of them! oops!

And finally, the performance! The show started at 5:15. By 4:50 this was the auditorium... front row seats were in demand!

We had a stage FULL of campers!! Wow. With all of the kids broken into groups when they came to see me, I didn't realize just how many little bodies we would have on stage!

Kylie was a ladybug.

Lexi was a firefly.

The show was a huge success!

And we are already working on next year's camp!