We had a great productive meeting today!
The team made great progress on many of their set pieces/props. We have the beginnings of the bee hive, the flowers, the grass, and a great theoretical concept for one of the bee's pheromone emitter device. Amongst all of the designing, cutting, gluing, etc. I forgot to take any pictures!
The team will continue in this intense building mode for a couple of other meetings and then they will be trying to put it all together into an actual performance.
Next week we are going to have an open ended meeting so any members of the team who have more time to put in and are still being productive can keep working.
I'm hopeful the team will have everything partly completed by the beginning of March so they can more or less give their performance with most of the scenery, props, and costumes at least roughly in place. This would give them the balance of the month of March to refine, rehearse, and really polish up their presentation. This would also coincide with the sneak peek; if they can pull this off in the next few meetings I've never had a team this far along by the sneak peek!
Until next week,
Mr. H.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Meeting #10 - 1/11/09
Meeting number 10 was our first meeting at Chloe's house. The room above the garage and the garage itself looks like it's going to work out well for the team as they move into the construction phase of the challenge. Luckily Ben's allergies didn't seem to be affected either.
We started with a simple Instant Challenge. The team had to put a large loop of string in different shapes without talking to each other. It started easy with a simple circle, square, triangle and then got more difficult with arrow, candy cane, and star shapes. The team completed these tasks fairly easily so on a whim I asked them to see if they could do "cat's cradle" life sized using people instead of fingers. They dove into this new challenge with a lot of enthusiasm (maybe because they were able to talk again) and actually managed to pull off the first few moves; check out the pictures for some of the action. Then on their own they morphed this into team jump roping. It's amazing what a good DI team can do with just some simple string!
Our next order of business was our first shopping excursion of the season to find materials to begin the set/prop/costume building process. It's fun to watch other adults expressions as 7 8th graders descend on the stores with their minds set on finding some good stuff. The team has at least some idea of how they are going to build most of their items. Purchases today included PVC pipe and associated fittings, pieces of foam, and of course, duct tape. At our next meeting we'll start experimenting with putting some of this stuff together and see how it works out.
To end the meeting we did a quick walk through of the script and identified all of the props, scenery, and costumes that were needed as the story stands right now.
That is all for this week,
Mr. H.
We started with a simple Instant Challenge. The team had to put a large loop of string in different shapes without talking to each other. It started easy with a simple circle, square, triangle and then got more difficult with arrow, candy cane, and star shapes. The team completed these tasks fairly easily so on a whim I asked them to see if they could do "cat's cradle" life sized using people instead of fingers. They dove into this new challenge with a lot of enthusiasm (maybe because they were able to talk again) and actually managed to pull off the first few moves; check out the pictures for some of the action. Then on their own they morphed this into team jump roping. It's amazing what a good DI team can do with just some simple string!
Our next order of business was our first shopping excursion of the season to find materials to begin the set/prop/costume building process. It's fun to watch other adults expressions as 7 8th graders descend on the stores with their minds set on finding some good stuff. The team has at least some idea of how they are going to build most of their items. Purchases today included PVC pipe and associated fittings, pieces of foam, and of course, duct tape. At our next meeting we'll start experimenting with putting some of this stuff together and see how it works out.
To end the meeting we did a quick walk through of the script and identified all of the props, scenery, and costumes that were needed as the story stands right now.
That is all for this week,
Mr. H.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Meeting #9 - 1/4/09
The first meeting of the new year.
Some good progress was made this meeting. This is was our last regular meeting at KI, after today's meeting we will typically meet at Chloe Warpinski's house. The Warpinski family has graciously offered the use of their garage and the room above their garage as we move into the construction phase of the season.
The team made good progress on the overall structure of the story, the team did several readings of the script and actually started to work on acting some of it out. The story is still coming together but all of the main elements are in place at this point in time.
A scale model of the main set piece was constructed (see the photo album for the result) and some good brainstorming on how to build the full size hive took place. There was also some planning on the overall costumes.
We also took a look at our schedule for the balance of the year. We have 11 regular meetings remaining in the season (we could add more in the last couple of weeks if required) and there does remain quite a bit of work to occur between now and then.
Some good progress was made this meeting. This is was our last regular meeting at KI, after today's meeting we will typically meet at Chloe Warpinski's house. The Warpinski family has graciously offered the use of their garage and the room above their garage as we move into the construction phase of the season.
The team made good progress on the overall structure of the story, the team did several readings of the script and actually started to work on acting some of it out. The story is still coming together but all of the main elements are in place at this point in time.
A scale model of the main set piece was constructed (see the photo album for the result) and some good brainstorming on how to build the full size hive took place. There was also some planning on the overall costumes.
We also took a look at our schedule for the balance of the year. We have 11 regular meetings remaining in the season (we could add more in the last couple of weeks if required) and there does remain quite a bit of work to occur between now and then.
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