Every December people from the Austin community gather for the Minor Mishap Marching Band’s Winter Solstice parade, making lanterns to bring light to the longest night of the year.
Our participation is an opportunity to connect our children, as makers, to the larger community by sharing beautiful, playful creations together.
Each year we find a way to make lanterns, often working in a way the children have discovered and done some experimenting with during the fall semester. At the parade we add our work to the many other ways people have figured out to help light the night. There are so many ways to shine!
This class has been passionate about working with collage so we chose to work in that medium for this year’s celebration. We created faces inspired by illustrator Beth Krommes’ lovely celestial images in Susan Marie Swanson’s The House in the Night.
We are proud of the way this year’s lantern project supported the children’s work together while also honoring individual variation and expression.
Marie shares an idea for a starting design. The children admire the eyes, noticing the use of the keys. Collage puts familiar items together in a different way to make something new.
The children begin by attaching a pair of bottle cap eyes then look through other materials to see what looks good for nose making and a mouth.
C: My lantern face needs eyebrows.
J, adding two beads to make dimples: It needs one more little bit.
Two children join C in a plan to work together to make a lantern for a new child in the group. They plan the face details and placement together. It’s decided that they will divide up maker tasks, agreeing that one child will place the eyes, one of them designs the mouth and L is in charge of the nose.
L (explaining, and stacking on a second button): I think it should be a fancy nose.
Looking at our lantern progress so far, the children agree the face part is really coming along. But what about the idea to make the faces look like the sun?
T: I think we will need the little things that stick out all around.
Comparing T’s description to different images of the sun, we settle on using the word radiants.
Ll: Or you could call them lines.
Z: From the circle part.
Marie: Another word for the circle part would be center.
L: It looks like a flower.
The children look at some of the sun images they’re thinking about, drawing about the shape they’d like to make, and think about what material might be good to make their idea happen.
T: I am thinking about popsicle sticks.
Children see what they can make happen with circle shapes and popsicle sticks.
Z: I am attaching the radiants. Radiants stick out all over from the center.
Meeting the band
Z: The band people came. They let us push the buttons on their instruments. When we pushed the buttons different sounds came out of the instruments.
M: It was so fun to touch the buttons!
Ll: I loved pulling the trombone.
L: The fast music made me want to dance!
Z: There was fast and slow and quick and medium music.
R: I loved the trumpets. I want to go to the parade now and dance and play around the musicians.
The Parade
