Kitah Daled in the Atelier

Trinkets, Treasures, and Portraits

The first project of the school year was inspired by the children’s thread of interest from last year. Kitah Daled was offered a variety of natural materials and asked to make a face. 

For Rosh Hashana, the children drew bees to top their honey jars.

They used photos of bees as well as simple black and white graphics as reference. The children then traced the images onto acetate sheets using permanent markers.

For Sukkot, the children used recycled materials, wire, and fabric scraps to create their Sukkah decoration.

For Simchat Torah, the children sprayed water onto bleeding tissue to make beautiful watercolor paintings on white fabric. This fabric was then glued onto a stick using hot glue.

Inspired by the children’s interest in treasures, they decorated their Menorah using crystals, gems, and metal loose parts.

Kitah Daled has been working on self portraits this year. 

For this project the children etched a representation of their faces into sheets of Styrofoam.

Using a mirror, the children used skewers to cut their image into the trays.

After the children drew their portraits, they rolled printing ink onto the image using brayers (rollers used for printmaking) being careful not to fill in the indentations.

They then placed a sheet of thick paper atop the inked image and used a clean roller to transfer the image onto the paper.

Continuing the threads of self portraits and recycled materials, the children were offered a variety of loose parts to create their image on cardboard.

One of our most recent projects was glue and sand painting. The children drizzled glitter glue over sheets of watercolor paper, then sprinkled an assortment of fine colored sand onto their design. The result is a magical, abstract, sparkling rainbow.