Gysiro Spyiro and the Magic Egg

MAPS has worked with the wonderful folks at EVCS since 2019, and this year we continued! We work with the students at EVCS on two occasions throughout the school year.  In the spring, we ran a 3-month residency with pre-K, Kindergarten and 1st grade students in which we use the arts as a vessel for teaching grade-level curricula. This year the themes were trees, birds, and recycling.  We created an “Art Film” that wove together these curricula topics in an exploratory video work with handmade costumes, dances, music, storyline, backgrounds, animation and narration!

Each fall we run a “Community Building” residency in which we work with all grades over two weeks and guide the children as they create art to fill the walls of the whole school! In this opening project, we use three principles of self-directed learning: play and exploration, mixed age groups and access to materials. Guided by these principles, we design a “carnival” of many art and music projects that the children, in reading-buddy partners, freely move between. We also help the children write a song that functions as a school-wide anthem, sung at monthly school-wide meetings in which students, teachers and parents come together. View that work here.