Saturday, September 28 at Beam Center in Cobble Hill marked our very first official Find & Seek class for 4-5 year-old children. We had a lovely time with six children ages 4-8, whose parents had responded to our online promotion of a Free First Class. The class included these activities: shape-shadow stories at the Overhead Projector, creating structures out of cardboard and tape, drawing large scale buildings on the wall, atop paper onto which we projected cityscapes, working with magnatiles and sparkly gems on light boxes, and building with large scale perforated cardboard pieces. There was so much wonderful action going on! We did our best to document the children's ideas and intuitive building projects.

As the children drew their dream houses on a wall superimposed with projections of cityscapes, here are some of their explanations of their work:

C: I drew a house with a door knocker and a treasure chest and a kitty cat on top.

V: This is a balloon because it's almost my birthday, and inside I made a piñata.

E: This is my house with a jet on the top. It's flying.

When one child entered into the space separated from the room by our hanging wire sculpture and some beautiful white paper packing material, she called it the "Art House," and proceeded to press a seemingly invisible point on the wall and call that a Secret Button that opened the door.

Another child became engrossed in building a tunnel out of the large scale cardboard stacking materials. He kept making and re-making the tunnel, going inside it, and soon began placing treasures deep within the structure.

The official description of this pilot class:

In this 5-part series of workshops, we at Find & Seek are inviting children to transform the BEAM Center space into a playground of materials and ideas. Children will have a rare extended opportunity to experiment with a range of overlapping languages: storytelling, improvisation, hands-on making, space transformation and group reflection. Children will tell collaborative stories and investigate a range of materials to create creatures, sculptures and architectural elements. Two experienced artist educators will facilitate the play and construction, and they will also listen closely, poised to document the children’s curious journeys. The final class will feature an exhibit of discoveries, stories, images, sounds, words and videos from the children’s creative process.

For parents who would like to try this class out, we still have four more Fall Saturday dates. The class will run from 10 - 11:30am on the following Saturdays:

10/5 (continues to the CARDBOARD CHALLENGE, from 11:30 until 5:30pm, open to the neighborhood--children, friends, parents, come one, come all, let's build a City of Dreams out of cardboard! Wonderful project created by the folks who made Caine's Arcade)....

10/12

10/26

11/2

Online registration for the upcoming four classes is HERE. You can register for all three together, or separately.

If we don't go to capacity we will also have space for DROP-INs, in which case you can bring your child to the class on any of those dates, FREE for the first class, then $45 thereafter.

We look forward to meeting you and your children!

For one child, the whole day was about creating this monumental tunnel structure. It was truly something to behold. Only children could fit inside it. It soon became a place where treasures could be stored.