summer school

Last Week of Summer School

~ Kate Wilson ~ 9 Comments

Here’s some paintings we have done. Guess who the featured artist is this week?

Summer School

~ Kate Wilson ~ 5 Comments

Today was my first day working in the summer school. This year we have chosen Famous Artists as our theme.
First Miró.
Now I know a lot more about him than before. He lived to be 90. Was born in Barcelona in the Gotic Area and lived the last 20 years of his life in Majorca. He was shy and liked working with images from his imagination, like the things you see when it is late at night and you are tired and there are patterns in front of your eyes.
The children found it easy to relate to these forms of suns, stars, ladders and insects.
And I noticed that my Catalan is so much better this year. Now I can communicate with them about more than just drinks and toilets!
It is lovely to see them gain confidence on the trapeze – first nervous and not wanting to take the risk. Then the beam of joy when they are up high with arms outstretched and swinging without support.
Can you see the spider in this pose?

What I love is seeing them working away on paintings and sculptures in the workshop – we produced some lovely cut out forms to use in Fridays show. When they are finished I’ll add a photo.
I used to be scared of children – they can be frightening when they just stare at you and then, when they have formed some secret opinion, turn their heads away to look for someone more interesting.


So it’s a challenge taking part in the summer school and it’s not over yet – four weeks to go – but today I felt much more relaxed about it all. Isn’t it funny how some things take almost your whole life to get to grips with? I was very shy at school and found the others terrifying with their confident games and loud voices. Of course I have moved on from there but still the presence of children can reactivate that fear of being rejected.  My mother ‘not-in-law’ once told me she felt the same – one of the many very nice things she shared with me to help me feel comfortable here.  It’s so nice to know you are not the only one!

Songs

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

Here are two Catalan songs we did in the summer school. If you click on the titles you can see them sung on YouTube – not by us as I haven’t learnt how to upload videos yet but it gives the idea.
And you can see examples of the clothes children wear when doing messy things in the art class. They are called ‘batas’ but due to the very similar sound between v and b I always heard it as Waters.

Mariners Com Que Bufa El Vent
Mariners com que bufa el vent. Cantem tots una cançoneta, Mariners com que bufa el vent Cantem tots un petit moment I la veu del petit grumet pujarà fins dalt de la cofa. I la veu del petit grumet sonarà com un vell concert.

Mireu Allà Dalt
Mireu allà dalt en els estels que hi ha
És un gros animal Que en bicicleta va
És un elefant I doncs que us penseu!
Té una cua al darrera i una otra al davant.
This one is done with lovely hand actions and I have sung it many times since – there is something about it that never fails to make me laugh. We did it much better than these people but the only other video I found showed a class of such small ones that they could hardly sing let alone mime.
A rough translation is – Look up there in the stars there is a big animal, riding a bicycle.
It’s an elefant and what to think? It has one tail at the back and another at the front!

Les Dones D’Aigua

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

Today was the last day of the summer school and as always we finished with a performance showing off some of the things we learnt over the week. The theme of the whole course was La Natura. The first week was Air, second Earth and third and last Water. It seemed a good idea to skip Fire as the children in general have enough Fire energy to fill all the weeks one hundred times over.
This week there were seven children and all girls. It felt easy after the boisterous busy boom-bang-bang days that went before. And it gave us the chance to do a story about Les Dones D’Aigua – the seductive sirens who live near the rivers in Montseny.
We danced with cintes – blue and shimmery and painted by the girlsWe played string instruments and rainmakers made out of tubes and filled with sand and shells.
The story was of a village where the people used water without caring how much they wasted. Each girl had a story – washing dishes with a running tap, watering the garden, filling up the swimming pool, flushing the toilet too often ….then one day the water ran out. They decided to go and see the Dones D’Aigua dressed in skirts of ribbon which we made the day before – the workshop is a fairyland with shelves of rolls of ribbon from the family business…… They in turn suggested visiting the Rain Goddess and after a long journey to find her( a chance to sing Row Row Row Your Boat in english) they were promised rain if they agreed to be more careful with water. Back in the village the rain drops began and turned into a torrent and all ended happily.
The stage looked beautiful. What last week was a banana tree sheltering the Tribe of Dogs now became a Rock with a waterfall where the Dones D’Aigua livedEveryone forgot their lines and had to be prompted which was very charming, the story about not being able to flush the toilet after doing a ‘caca’ got a big laugh, noone fell over, the whole thing probably lasted about 15 minutes and it was a delight.
This was something I felt nervous about taking on but I have enjoyed it so much and remembered many things that I used to do as a child and now have a chance to do againAnd Duna wasn’t left out. She came to visit several times and helped some of the girls overcome their fear of dogs – really fear – two of them jumped on chairs when they saw her the first time!
And I can’t resist this picture of Clara showing how it is done with three or four hoola-hoops!