SECOND WORKSHOP 3RD MAY
Today was good and very busy! I worked with the peerie class (primary 1-3) in the morning and the big class (primary 4-7) in the afternoon. A few parents came to help out, as well as my new volunteers, Iwona and Chloe, who were a great help. I arranged two different activities and it was much more satisfactory as each class was split into two, so I had half the number for half the time and then they swapped over. One group was working on the mosaics while the other group was painting the clay plaques they made last time with underglazes. I plan to fire the clayworks in the local secondary school kiln. Although working in ceramic was not possible due to time constraints for this project, the school were very keen on clay, so I managed to include some clay activities and each pupil will be able to take something home.
After running two workshops with the younger class, I requested that we concentrate on involving the older class from now on for two important and very logical reasons: I have a lot of work to do to get these very labour intensive, detailed mosaics made before my ferry leaves and the older class are better able to help me achieve this. Secondly, the younger pupils are not only too young to use the tile cutters, but their attention span is short, let alone for a two or even one hour session. I still have three workshops to go, one of which was meant to be for the wee ones, but we came to a happy conclusion: I would work with the older class and all the younger ones whose parents attended.
