My Favorite Program
I’ve been an intern with the museum for almost two full months now so I thought I would talk about my favorite program I’ve been a part of so far: Advanced Explorers.
Advanced Explorers was a week long program for kids ages 8-11 and then an afternoon class for kids ages 12-15.
I worked with the older group and because of the size of the class (only five kids) we were able to do some really cool projects that would not have been possible with a larger group of kids. We started the program with a short museum tour focusing on illustrations which the kids used as inspiration in creating their own mixed media illustration (using collage, watercolor, acrylic paint, marker, and colored pencil).
We also made mixed media landscapes, large-scale self-portrait collage,and printmaking; but the most intensive (and most fun) project we were able to do in this class was a stop motion animation. I didn’t think it was possible to do this sort of project in a week long summer program, but these kids proved me wrong. They came into class the second day full of ideas and spent the first hour or so of the day brainstorming ideas, coming up with a storyboard, and assigning jobs for creating the characters and props.
After they were satisfied with all of their ideas, we gave them materials to start creating the characters for their animation. One group made an adorable purple dragon to serve as our “villain” while another group made an Elsa doll from the movie Frozen, while the final group was in charge of making the setting (a cave) and props (ice and fire and smoke). The next day we began “filming” the short film by having the kids take turns photographing the characters and adjusting them slightly to give the illusion of movement. I was amazed by how patient they were and how well the pictures turned out. The next day we edited the images together and the kids recorded sound effects for the finished product.
I don’t think I would have had the patience and discipline to complete a project of this scale, but these kids showed me that it is possible and I look forward to more exciting projects in the days to come.
Check out our finished film, “The Cave” here
