Hæ! Hi!
It was a very emotional day when the 2nd and 3rd grade kids from Seyðisfjörður came across the artwork of the Michigan kids. I remembered what it meant to receive a letter in the mail when I was a girl. The heart beating fast and the curiosity to the surface of the skin.
At the time of being invited to translate these artworks using tracing paper, some kids enjoyed and others were frustrated because the result was not "perfect". We have talked about different emotions around tracing work. Some kids added questions to their tracing. I think everyone left with the feeling of getting to know the Michigan kids a little through their artwork and tracing.
In the next meeting we received videos of kids from Michigan asking questions to kids from Iceland. The questions were extremely rich for me and then I thought, maybe the kids here can build journalist puppets to answer the questions.
That's how I invited the kids to invent a journalist who could be a person or an animal, a monster or a troll or an elf. Each kid chose the character of his journalist.
Once the puppets were ready, the kids watched the videos and began to play the answers in the theater.
It was very curious how for the kids here the questions seemed difficult to answer because they had not imagined those questions; What is it like to live on an island? How can glaciers and volcanoes exist in the same place at the same time?
I have been left with the pleasant feeling of meeting with the different gaze that looks at what we do not ordinarily look at.
With love,
Tessa Rivarola
The 3rd graders at Holly Academy in Michigan, USA are making and sharing art with 2nd and 3rd graders at Seyðisfjarðarskóli in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland.
