Written by 2023-24 AFA Intern Mackenzie Timbrell
On Wednesday, December 6th, I had the pleasure of shadowing teaching artist Brynne O’Rourke at the Renaissance Charter School in Elmhurst. At the beginning of the class, Brynne invited all the students to the rug at the front of the room to sit down. Our first activity was to warm up with a call and repeat exercise. The song consisted of a bunch of sounds and phrases that everyone would sing in varying emotions and tones. For example, a child would call out “sad,” and they would complete the whole song in a sad tone. The children really loved this activity and wanted to continue with it after we had finished. After our warm-up, we moved on to the main activity of the day, which was beginning to make giraffe puppets. In the previous class, they had just read a book about a giraffe, so today’s activity was to color in the paper template of the giraffe from the story. The students loved this exercise, and they were able to show their artistic individuality through the colors they chose and how they drew in the colors on the giraffe. At the end of our time with the class, we said our thank you/goodbye song, and the class transitioned to their next subject. It was so fun to see all the children excited to have class with Brynne and express their creativity through the drawing project.
