Pro-Practise collaboration

Crafts with Boys Brigade

What is boys brigade?

 Boys' Brigade is a Christian run organisation, it was founded by Sir William Alexander Smith, the main purpose of the organisation was set up to integrate fun activities with christian values. Following its introduction in Glasgow in 1883, the Boys brigade spread quickly across the UK and was a worldwide organisation by the early 1980's. 

Boys Brigade is organised into...sections, depending on age; 

• Anchor Section - for Boys aged 5 to 8 years
• Junior Section - for Boys aged 8 to 11 years
• Company Section - for Boys aged 11 to 15 years
• Seniors - for young men aged 15 to 18 years
• Amicus - for young people aged 14 to 22 year

As part if our collaboration project, we will be working with anchor boys and potentially moving on to juniors in the later part of our programme.

What is the Anchor Section?

The Anchor Section is the youngest section in the BB and is for children aged between 5 and 8.

What do they do?

The Anchor Section has lots of fun doing different activities which include making things, crafts, music, games, sports, stories, going on visits, making friends, and working towards their badges. 

All of this is done as part of a balanced programme that is separated into 5 different zones; 

How we planned our time;

Date:	Theme	Craft	Materials
12/3	Getting to know thechildren	Paper-plate Hats	Paper plates, pritt stick, felt tips, stickers,
19/3	Insects	Pebble art	Pebbles/stones, paint, Googly eyes, pipe-cleaners,Sharpie markers, newspaper, paper plates, paper bowls, paint brushes, black plastic bags

26/3	Mother’s day	Cards	Card, buttons, flowers, tissue paper, ribbon, sequins, glitter, pipe-cleaners, lolly pop sticks, paint,
2/4	Easter	Easter Cards,Easter letters,  Easter Crosses
9/4	Easter	Easter Baskets,   Paper platechicks, EasterGardens

16/4	/	HOLIDAY	/
23/4	/	HOLIDAY	/
30/4	Recycle crafts	Piggy Banks	250ml bottles, pink tissue paper, pink paper ears, prittstick, googly eyes, pink pigs noses
7/5	Nature	Paint printing	Plastic bottles
14/5	Super hero	Super hero-asks	Flexi-foam

Our first session;

 This session was a "getting to know you session" which consisted of making a paper hat (using paper plates)  the boys were then asked to write 5 things about themselves/ or things they like.

Our second session;

Lindsey provided paint, Pebbles and images for the night, the session was based around the idea of nature and insects;

We had asked the boys to decorate the Pebbles as insects, we all were a bit ambitious of this as most of the pebbles came back covered in paint with no sign of insects.

Our third session;

Based on mother's day, we asked the boys to make mother's day Cards, lindsey supplied most the materials (pens, paper, decorations)

Whilst I provides cut out paper hearts, cards and envelopes.

I had also wanted to get the boys to create paper flowers that they could give to their mom's as mother day presents, (using green straws and tissue paper) however we had ran out of time and could not start the activity.

After a tutorial session it was clear that Lidsey felt in over her head as she was supplying and organising most of the crafts, although I had chipped in with ideas and offered to lighten the expenditure lindsey was facing, I had also helped with some resources. We felt like not everyone was contributing equally.

On the day we all watched over separate groups and participated it was not fair for lindsey to have to organise all the material. It was here I suggested to lindsey that we all do our own crafts, whilst supplying the materials ourselves.

Session 4:

In our fourth session we found ourselves split into three groups each pursuing a different craft, our idea was to get the boys to move around and create more then one craft.

I was in charge of Easter cards, I supplied all the materials, for this craft.

Materials needed for this craft;

• Cards and envelopes
• felt tip pens
• pencils
• crayons
• tissue paper/crepe paper
• stickers (easter themed)
• glue

This is my example that was shown to the boys;

This is some of the work the boys produced;

Session 5;

In this session like our previous session we focused on Easter crafts, I had offered to do Easter gardens, which entailed; me making 15 square gardens using paper plates.

The boys were asked to make flowers, decorate polystyrene Easter Eggs, and generally decorate their gardens.

Materials needed for this session;

felt tip pens

pencils

crayons

tissue paper/crepe paper

Easter themed decorations

glue

scissors

cellotape

these are the examples of easter crafts I found online;

I had wanted to print out information on what flowers grow in spring time as to add some insight and learning to the activity, however,, from previous sessions I thought this would be a waste of time and resources as the Boy's preferred to do things their own way.

My garden idea;

to create the Easter gardens, I first folder 16 paper plates into square shapes, cello-taped the corners and coated them with a wash of brown paint to make them look like fence panels.

With my own Garden, I started to cut out chunks to make a picket fence style, I decided that id' leave it white as the white picket fence idea looked nice to me.

I added some green tissue paper to the 'ground' to act as grass and then developed by cutting flowers from card and using paper flowers that I had brought (these all so had gems the boys could use).
I had also brought polystyrene eggs I decorated a few of these and stuck them into my garden as well as plastic chicks.

Session 6;

Unfortunately I was unable to make this session as I had been really ill and couldn't make it.

The session was left up to Lindsey and Charlie, the girls combined both super hero masks and Piggy banks together to give the boys a variety of activities to do.

Session 7;

nature/bottle painting, Lindsey originally gave me the idea for this, I suggested finger painting to make the flower petals but she said it would be too messy and I should look at bottle printing.


what was needed for this session;

• paint (I used neon pink, yellow orange and green)
• felts/crayons
• empty washed plastic bottles (various sizes)
• paper (I brought a large poster roll)

Taking idea from flower paintings, I decided that I would quite like the boys to make a display piece to exhibit on the walls in their classroom, I originally sketched out this image of a tree;

and added a few 'bottle flowers' myself just to show the boys how to dip the paint.

This is what the boys returned to me;

it seemed two of the boys on this particular day felt quite destructive and completely ignored what I had said, even when I reminded the boys that this would be a display piece and I had wanted at least one print from all the boys on it as a mural, they continued to smudge paint every where.

One of the boys actually felt quite sad that the other two had 'sabotaged' his image as he put it, so I offered to let him make his own, this is the result I got from him.

I also had another image created in a similar style;

This one unfortunately was not finished.

I was also quite intrigued with the pattern that was left when the boys had placed their bottles back on to a blank piece of paper (I had put this paper down so the boys didn't get paint every where.)

session 8;
Throughout the project I really wanted the boys to learn something, that would help towards there badge as they have been looking at nature; plants and insects, seasonal tasks and they have a badge based on space I thought I would take it on myself to teach them something about...
the solar system;

 I had wanted the boys to create a 3d mobile, I originally made a polystyrene mobile however, I knew I wouldn't have enough polystyrene balls to make 15, nor would I have the time with the boys to make the solar systems as we usually only get between 10-25 minutes craft time. So I looked for a cheaper and faster alternative, I made this example to show them...

these are  few of the cheaper & fast alternatives I found, print outs with planets on them so the boys could just colour them in and attach them to their mobiles.

I had ordered some black paper plates for the mobiles but they never arrived in time, I also miss placed my black paint, so to colour the plates I used permanent markers.

I decided against using this one and went for the first alternative as it seems more child friendly.

Here are a few images of what we made on the night;

Some of the boys didn't want to make solar systems so I also gave them the option to create a solar system picture. we didn't manage to get any of the solar system mobiles finished due to lack of time, all that was left was for the boys to stick their planets onto the mobile so they took them home to finish them off.

Our Website;

Www.primarycraftprojects.wix.com/primarycraftprojects 

I created this website after a tutorial with Sean, he asked us what our aims and objectives are for the project and how we wanted to present ourselves as professionals.
He asked us if we had a name for our collaborative group and at this point we didn't, he then suggest we played around with our names (Lindsey, Charlie, Jamie) to see if we could find anything he then suggested our last names (Broadfield, Woolls and Russell) which was even worse.
During our discussion he asked what we did in the workshops and with what ages of children, the answer came to be our name 'Primary Craft Projects' as this could be applied to all aspects of our workshops if we had further opportunities. He then suggested that we should create an online portfolio.

I originally started using a website software called webs, but it was really difficult and made things hard to edit.

Stuart recommended Wix and I made the basics of the website in a day, I then updated it weekly with the workshops we had done.
 

Presenting our work;

To present our work we organised the table in to groups and set on different crafts for our peers to perform.
we then spoke about what we had been doing at the boys brigade and how we feel the project had gone.

overall, I feel the project was a success, I learned that I am still passionate about teaching, however, I would prefer to specialise in secondary school teaching and help students who have specialist areas in art.

If I could have changed anything I the project it would to have had the opportunity to work with anther group of students instead of just boys brigade. I would have also liked to get the boys to learn more things as I felt that the craft times were used for the boys to mess around and just make things, thy never learned anything that would potentially help them in gaining their badges next year.