ART IS...

 Art is...fun.  inspiring.  creative.  fundraising??

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The Perkins School has embarked on a project with Rightside Shirts.  This young nonprofit company raises money for youth art education by selling t-shirts designed by students.  One hundred percent (that's right, 100%) of the profits are given back to the school to fund art programs and supplies. 

The whole process starts with all our kids drawing or painting or sketching anything they want to.  Here are just a few examples of our kids' contributions.

Jeff and Dylan, the co-founders of Rightside, come to collect the art.  Then they have a hard job as well.  They select five to ten drawings from all these masterpieces as possible candidates for the three(?) to be printed on the t-shirts.  

Normally they would just pick those three themselves.  

We, however, do things the Perkins Way.  

We taught our kindergarteners the basics of democracy by having them vote to name the crane that helped build Phase One of Old Colony.  We reinforced the lesson for Ms. Murphy's second graders when they learned how to campaign, vote, and win or lose gracefully while deciding their class pet.  Now, Leo the leopard gecko is beloved by all.

This time we will have a school-wide election.  We will vote to select which designs will appear on our t-shirts.  Democracy at work.

 Once the t-shirts are made, Perkins kids and our community will be able to buy them for $14, with the profits of that sale feeding our budget for next year's art supplies.

Jeff and Dylan will also decide if one of those designs will go onto the Rightside web site (www.rightsideshirts.org) to be sold to the world!  Again those profits would come back to the Perkins to fund art.

What's going to happen?

Which designs will be voted on?

Stay tuned.

Another Way to Give Thanks

The Perkins kids left for the long Thanksgiving weekend thinking of turkey, stuffing (and, of course, a mini-vacation). Now, however the kids also knew that other Americans had  different fall harvest holidays to celebrate.

Ms. Jannette Vanderhoop is a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah / Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard.  She came to talk to the Perkin kids about what it means to be a member of a Native American tribe – in the present 21st century and at the time the Pilgrims arrived in North America in the 17th century.

Her book Cranberry Day explains the major thanksgiving festival the Wampanoag Tribe celebrated long before the Pilgrims came to their land. In the old days, the celebration of the cranberry harvest was three days long.  Nowadays it is just one, but it is still lots of fun.  Kids don't go to school.  Elders of the tribe share stories of the past with them and everyone eats a feast--including cranberries, of course.

Ms. Vanderhoop also brought some of the cloths and traditional jewelry her people used to wear.

After she left, the kids had their own celebration; many classes turned much of what they learned into beautiful bulletin board displays.

Ms. Leverett-King's class demonstrated that the cranberry can be used for another purpose besides food and a good way to get enough vitamin C.

It can also be used for painting!

Showtime! (almost)

The kids worked so hard. They practiced for so long. It seemed like forever. Then it was over in a minute.

Instead of just saying Evacuation Day, The Musical was wonderful and leaving it at that, we thought we would spend a few posts this week reporting on the experience.






























Ask any actor, things feel very, very different once you are in costume.



















Suddenly you feel your part. You take the whole thing much more seriously.



















Scenery also makes things much more dramatic!



















Kids worked with our art teachers to paint the beautiful street scene of colonial Boston. It was based on an illustration from our book, written and illustrated by our own students, Why Do We Celebrate Evacuation Day?



















Our props weren't too shabby either. How about this cannon?

Do you know what was the best of all? Our audience! Parents, teachers, friends, neighbors came to see the show--all four performances.
























The mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, even came to see the show.

Do you wish you had been there? Well, perhaps we can reproduce some of it for you on the blog this week.

We're Artists, We're Builders

Phase 1 of Old Colony has given the Perkins kids a lot: a live demonstration of how to build houses for a year, a beautiful new view, a new playground, and a new community center where we can have programs and do our Lego classes.

Luckily we can give something back. The Tierney Community Center is up and running, but it isn't 100 percent finished. One wall must still be tiled, and the Perkins kids are going to help.


Nope, they aren't picking up mastic and trowels (tile glue and the tools you spread it with). Our students are MAKING the tiles, about 200 of them.

In fact, it has been very busy at the Perkins. Our art teachers, Ms. Robles and Ms Yazbeck, have had their own art factory with shifts of kids learning how to decorate tiles with glaze. There's a trick to it because the glazes look like one color, but once they are baked they turn into another. One looks blue on the brush, for example, and will later become clear!






Luckily the kids could use pencil to draw out their pictures if they wanted to. All those lines would be burned off when the glazes were baked onto the tiles. So Nalayja had no problem executing her design.


"I like to draw things that are outside," she said, as she finished painting her flowers. Another tile ready to be fired, just like the ones behind her lining the corridor floor.














Students aren't the only people at Perkins getting in on the act. Many teachers and staff members sat down for their turns at the art table. Check out Ms. McDonough's great technique!




The wall is going to be beautiful, isn't it?

We'll keep you posted about the next step in the process.

Thank You, Very Much!

As we mentioned last week, Suffolk Construction was busy over the summer, not only building the new homes in Old Colony, but also fixing and painting the Perkins School. The second graders in Ms. Sweatt and Mrs. Murphy's classes were busy last week too. The kids thought the construction company and the painters deserved a official "thank you." So, yesterday they got one, second-grade style.

Mr. O'Toole of Suffolk and Mr. Schinazi of the painting company, Senices Enterprises, started out in Ms. Sweatt's class. As they folded themselves in student-sized chairs and waited, one girl overheard that Mr. Schinazi had painted the school.

"Did you do it all by yourself?" she asked. "No," he answered, "I would still be painting if it was just me. There were four of us." Four men painting the entire inside of the school seems amazing enough!



Once all the kids were assembled, two of them presented the men with a giant, beautiful card--with pictures and everything. Since everyone in the class wrote (and illustrated) a card, other students also had something to share. Mr. O'Toole and Mr. Schinazi had a pile of thanks to take back to work with them.





The pile got bigger after a visit to Mrs. Murphy's class. Some students stood and read their thank-you notes. After each one, everybody applauded. He didn't think anyone could hear, but Mr. O'Toole leaned over to Mr. Schinazi and said, "It's fun, isn't it?" Mr. O'Toole and Mr. Schinazi left with a stack of cards and letters.











We can't show you all of them; here are just a few. Remember, you can click on any picture to make it bigger.