The art of Where the Sunrise Begins

Last week I had a wonderful experience with a dual language kindergarten class of 5 year olds at
P.S. 48 in Manhattan. I led a workshop with Madame Rogue and some generous class mothers and we created accordion books based on the idea of Where the Sunrise Begins.

The children wrote poems with words that described where the sunrise began for them, everything from the warmth of family to the actual color of the sun as it peeks over the landscape. We worked in pastel and pencil and by the end of the session we were walking sunrises, all of us!

I really wanted to share a little guy's face on this blog that had very festive marks deliberately painted on it. He was a real celebration! Sadly, I did not shoot a picture, at the risk of anarchy and unwitting encouragement of a rumpus ...a lesson I learned from leading a class on Pollack painting "technique" to a second grade class, but I digress...

The children explored new materials; kneaded erasers and pastel dust, pastel paper, pastel sticks, and sanding blocks. They learned about the idea of sequence and what a horizon line is. Most importantly they keyed into the fact that the sunrise began in many ways, "in our hearts" and in their imagination.