It’s been a busy summer over at Ivy Academy where Ivy’s Summer Camps have been in full swing since June. This year, The Ivy Group offered a wide range of summer camp fun with options ranging from a traditional Chinese culture camp to camps specializing in science, art, drama, and even a Lego camp. Sister school Daystar Academy offered its own summer program designed to strengthen academic and non-academic English and Chinese through participation in activity-based learning both inside and outside the classroom.
For this week’s summer camp 2015 highlight, beijingkids speaks to the lead teacher for Ivy’s art camp, Lisa Perdomenico. Perdomenico tells beijingkids more about what Ivy’s campers have been up to the last few weeks.
“At Ivy’s summer art camp, it’s all about innovation, self-expression, and an immeasurable about of creativity. The children and staff are encouraged to create and experiment, with both the expected materials such as paint, glue, clay, but also the less expected materials such as glow sticks and pushpins. Campers are free to expand their artistic world by exploring their environment, they are free to grab a can of shaving cream off of a shelf, ask for a few bottles of food coloring to create tie dye effect paintings, or to even ask to paint with balloons. Painting with balloons in our camp doesn’t mean dipping balloons in paint to create an imprint of the balloon. Here at Ivy, painting with balloons translates into, filling balloons with paint, suspending the balloons from the ceiling and popping them with a pushpin attached to a new toilet plunger, creating Jackson Pollock-esque paintings.
The art installations the children are most proud of this year is the Michelangelo inspired paintings in which the children filled spray bottles with paint, sprayed large pieces of paper suspended over their heads. The highlight of this activity was seeing the children and teachers covered in paint from head to toe as it dripped all over us, the children looked in mirrors and giggled as well as chuckled at the messy teachers. They proudly hung their work from the ceiling and admired its beauty every day.
The other piece that not only brought the children together, but also inspired the children to use unconventional materials, was the Eric Daigh inspired pushpin sculpture. The children had a great time creating unique patterns and effects using a pencil to sketch out the lines before inserting the pins, the reason we are guessing this was such a popular activity was the fact they got to stand on tables and work cooperatively with their peers.
Of course artists need to take a break and enjoy the great outdoors. When they weren’t zipping down waterslides they created with teachers or swimming, they were out visiting 798 art district where the children had a great time exploring the 3-D museum.
Our camp closed with a DIY day where families and teachers came together and created artistic crafts as a group, proving art and creativity brings people from all-over the world together speaking a common language called creative freedom.”
There are still spaces available for Ivy’s Lego camp from August 3-14. Parents can sign up directly here or contact catherine.li@ivygroup.org.
Photos: Courtesy of Ivy Academy
