Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art

We had loads of fun at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art on Friday! We met up with the Pouncing Pumas and they brought us little notebooks and pencils to draw down inspirations. We spent most of our time on the third floor of the museum checking out sculptural works by four Canadian artists – Shary Boyle, Marc Courtemanche, Carmela Laganse, and Brendan Tang. We also had a lot of fun looking at all the very different Christmas trees throughout all floors of the museum. We all can't wait until we can get our little hands on the block of clay already sitting in the studio!

Learning about what clay is, how it turns into ceramics,  what a kiln is, and about glazes.

Artsy outings

This week we visited artist-run center Xpace on Ossington and the NFB Mediatheque at John and Richmond.

We learned that these murals were painted with regular house paint and that you are free to touch the paintings!

We took turn telling stories we saw in the paintings.

This installation in the basement was a big hit; we all LOVED going through the drawers and playing with all the strange things in them. We loved this piece of artwork so that that we're really hoping to come back next week so that Hanna and Finn who weren't with us could see the show... and so that we can play more!

 

Watching movies with a friend at the NBF while snacking is one of the best things to do on a rainy day!

We took turn operating the viewing machines.

 

Field trip: Queen St. W., Koreantown

Even though the weather is getting cold, there were many beautiful sunny days last week that we had to take advantage of.

Queen St. W.
On Tuesday, we walked through Trinity Bellewoods, snacked at a picnic table on the south side of the park, and learned about sound waves and "timber" (property of sound). We walked a few blocks east on Queen Street to listen for the different sounds that were all around us. It was then when "Prickly Caramel", the latest addition to Team Cycling Giants, came into our lives.

Meet "Prickly Caramel"!

We also got to wave hello to Ruben (a Wandering Hamster) through the windows of White Squirrel (coffee shop) and enjoyed story time at Type, the local bookstore. I love those unexpected surprises during outings!



Koreantown 

Pose for the camera in P.A.T. Groceries.

Scavenger hunt 1: find Kimbap.

Scavenger hunt 2: find chocolate snack.

Scavenger hunt 3: find a vegetable that you've never seen before.

Bitter melon!

We paid for shrimp chips and mango candies ourselves and said "hello" in Korean.

Taking public transportation during rush hour is as easy as pie now.

Collaboration: 3D

A few weeks ago we went to Show&Tell Gallery on Dundas and checked out artworks by Know Hope, an Israeli artist know for his street art pieces that often make use of found wood.

On the way back to studio...

 

We found some scrape pieces of wood (along with a bunch of fabric samples) on the street to make our own art in the style of Know Hope! It took two Wednesdays to finish this collaborative 3-dimensional sculpture. Most of us think that it is a city, while other are convinced that it's an alternate universe. Hopefully, we'll make use of this awesome sculpture in a future project (hint: as a backdrop)! 

I wonder if the pink heart (bottom right) is a reference to Know Hope's work!

Kimbap is like the Korean version of a sandwich

In preparation of a visit to Koreatown, we started learning a little bit about Korean culture. First, we made some delicious kimbap. Kimbap is like the Korean version of a sandwich: you just stuff whatever you can find in the fridge into some rice wrapped in seaweed for a quick lunch!

First, a tasting of store-bought Kimbap. We guessed each ingredient in here – eggs, crab meat, tofu, radishes, carrots, spinach and mushrooms – and learned about how they grow / how they were made into food.

Then, we tasted a little piece of each traditional filling that is going into our kimbap. The teacher bought these already prepared (pickled, marinated, cooked, cut into strips) at P.A.T Groceries on Bloor Street in Koreatown. The rice was made by Angel in advance, it was seasoned with sesame oil and some salt. However, we thought you can only taste the sesame oil and not so much the salt. (Note: season the rice while it's hot, but let it cool until it's comfortable to touch, though if the rice is near room temp, it won't stick to the ingredients as well.)

Theo demonstrates an important trick in this picture: wetting your hands before handling the rice helps to keep your fingers stickiness-free!  

We figured out which way the ingredients go eventually.

Wax paper is used just to keep from too much rice sticking to the bamboo mat

Finn is on a roll! 

It's not as easy as it looks, we all needed a bit of help.

We each made two small rolls of Kimbap – one traditional and the other experiemntal. Other than some traditional fillings that were left, we had mango, kiwi, and avocado for our experimental rolls!

Almost done!

Voilà!

After learning about kimbap, we tried writing some Korean characters that we found on the packaging of seaweed and etc..

 

It was hard! But, all of us got the flipped "F" right.

Finally, the thing we wanted to learn the most, Korean-style chocolate treats!

We also learned how to say "hello" in Korean: "an nyong ha seh yo". Now, we're very ready to take a trip to Koreatown! 

Afrobeat with substitute teacher Dan Lee!

Today, we learned about Afrobeat – it originated in Nigeria, in the continent of Africa. We played percussion along with Fela Kuti's tunes and came up with new dance moves.

Halloween Installation in Osler Park

Last Thursday, we made ghosts with tissue paper and apples (that have gone bad) to decorate the Osler Park playground. Just in time for Halloween!

We brought snack up to the castle. Adults weren't allowed in!

Isa lead the clean-up team. Genius! But, so messy!

The lunch bags were thrown down the slides a few times just for fun.

We did clean everything up eventually.

Nice climbing, Finn!

Dessa showed us how to make ghosts with just tissue paper, apples, a marker, and some strings.

Each ghost got two pieces of tissue paper: an underlayer and a jacket.

We helped each other with the string part.

Time to install them!

There were some tiny ghosts Dessa had brought to playschool earlier, we installed those as well.

Finn found one of the scariest spots to install a ghost!

Dessa's upside down ghost!

We built a bonfire (without the fire) with the little bit of free time left.

On Friday, all four groups got together to have a big Halloween games day, only Beth from the Pouncing Puma got a chance to take some photos!