Honorable
Mention - Elementary TULSA: WHERE WE LIVE, LEARN, WORK, PRAY, PLAY The students at Cooper Elementary love to work with clay, so we decided that our collage entry should be done using clay as the medium. We talked about the theme for a long time before we started, brainstorming about how we could best depict our city. We decided to make miniature replicas of some of Tulsa's monuments and landmarks. We talked about all the things that make Tulsa such a great city to live in, and every time a student created one artifact, it gave us new ideas of others to make. Throughout the discussions of places the students had been and things they had done, the students discovered how much Tulsa has to offer. While the collage was fun to make, it really made an impact on how we view Tulsa. Many students in smaller towns have to be driven to the fair, a baseball game, or to our museums. We have them at our fingertips, and often get to take study trips from school to visit these places. The "LIVE" part was probably the most fun, because we got to talk about all the things that make Tulsa unique, like our vulnerability to tornadoes, our penguin exhibits, the Driller man, and our great zoo. The part of the rainbow where we put our "LEARN" items was interesting because there were so many choices concerning education in Tulsa. We have wonderful public and private schools in Tulsa as education is paramount in our city. We have a superintendent and school board that work closely together to insure our kids get the best education possible. We found the "WORK" part challenging, because the kids had more ideas than we could use. They all wanted to make something for that area. We settled for a few representations of the vast employment opportunities Tulsa provides. The "PRAY" area gave us an opportunity to explore the religious diversity in our city. The students had ridden past many churches, synagogues, etc, but didn't realize what they were about. This helped create some lively discussions about various religious traditions. The "PLAY" portion was exciting because that's what we like to do!!! We go to the fair, the circus, parks, water, parks, river festivals, downtown festivals, 4th of July celebrations, etc. There is never a dull moment for those that like to stay busy, as Tulsa is a very family friendly, city. To begin the collage, we
bought the board, paint, sandpaper, Mod Podge, and polyurethane using
school funds, and got the clay and glazes from the art department. Approximately
30 - 40 fourth and fifth graders worked on the clay objects from November
until early March, and then we decided to create a rainbow format to
display our ceramics. We placed the paper pieces for our rainbow, sun
and cIoud, and finally got to start gluing the paper pieces and ceramics
on the rainbow with Quick Set Epoxy. We finished our project by putting
polyurethane over the entire board. We displayed a The slow evolution of the project reinforced the concept that anything worth doing is worth doing right and that good things do take time. So many of our projects take a week or less to finish, so it was good to teach them the life skill of perseverance when they would have preferred instant results. The city of Tulsa has improved in so many ways over the years, and is committed to explore new and innovative ways to become even better. The life skill of perseverance our students used doing the project paralleled with the perseverance of the Tulsa tradition. |