Activity Guide by Tilly Woodward
Curator of Academic and Community Outreach
Grinnell College Museum of Art
Everyone Deserves a Trophy
In a normal summer Grinnell College Museum of Art works with hundreds of area children to look at, think about, talk about, write about, and make art, supporting area learning and literacy programs. It’s a tradition that we wrap up summer programs with the Exhibition of Summer Student Artists and the Academy Awards of Learning. This year is different because of the coronavirus, so we want to share the idea of the project with you.
Write and Reflect
We ask students to reflect on what they are most proud of learning and why. Then we ask them to write about their achievement. It’s always surprising, and often moving, to read what matters to children. What they have mastered, or are working to master. Reflections range from gains in academics of all kinds, sports, the arts, personal relationships, and spiritual awareness.
Create
Once they’ve written their reflection, we turn them loose with all sorts of odds and ends including old horse show ribbons, old trophies, household recyclables like cardboard tubes and plastic bottles, tin cans, popsicle sticks, tin foil, bits of ribbon, old plastic Happy Meal toys, old watches, bottle caps, pieces of netting from fruit and vegetable packing, pine cones, fabric bits, tinsel, old Christmas ornaments and holiday decorations, junk jewelry, beads, buttons, old CDs, pipe cleaners, yarn, string, wire, old fake flowers, old wrapping paper and mylar balloons, that stuff that lives in the back of your junk drawer…
Children use a substructure like old horse show ribbons or a plastic bottle and jazz it up with all sorts of things from the previous paragraph. The more bling the better — this is the Academy Awards! They will need help with gluing. Hot glue is easiest. Super glue and epoxy are strongest, but epoxy is toxic. Elmer’s is good for porous items, but doesn’t work well on slick surfaces. Tape is a strategy that some kids love.
Celebrate
We designate a stage area and masters of ceremonies who uses a mic and PA to announce the name of each winner, calling them up one by one to the stage. We read the “nomination” that they have written, and present them with their tricked-out trophy. We include a drum roll, applause, and encourage them to take a bow. It’s a joyful event, both for children and for museum staff.
Adapt
GCMoA is completely virtual this summer and we will miss holding the Academy Awards of Learning, but we encourage you to do this activity as a family unit (whatever that is for you!) and celebrate learning with the people you live with. Write together, create together, and plan the awards. The front steps or a spot beneath a tree in your yard will make a good setting for the ceremony. A pan and a wooden spoon make for a raucous drum roll. A hairbrush for a microphone and you’re in business. Enjoy!