Monday, October 27, 2008

Introducing Our November 1st Presenter...Ilya Korolev

Ilya Korolev was born in Moscow, Russia. As a child he was very curious about how things worked, and often took toys apart to see what was inside.

He studied in Moscow Architecture Institute (Russia), and Pratt Institute School of Architecture in Brooklyn, NY. He is now currently working at Andrew Berman Architect. His current projects include NYPL Branch Libraries and Renovations/additions at PS1 Contemporary Art Center.

Ilya will be taking the Green Apple Kids families on a journey to a land made by children. The importance of sustainable structures will be the underlining theme while we create a city from our imagination by using, old milk and yogurt containers,toilet paper rolls, and other reusable objects that often go straight in to the trash. We will be turning these objects into houses and buildings, and these structures will then form a larger map of a land designed collaboratively by our very own green kids. This activity will engage children's and parent's understanding of urban living and challenge their thinking about their own environment.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

October 4th Workshop Review

Tea Bag: a container of thin paper holding tea leaves.

Tee Bag: a fabric container made through the process of refashioning a tee shirt into a shopping bag.

Our last workshop was a stitchin’ good time. The question posed was, How can we recycle t-shirts? And Marge Mendel gave us a smart solution: tee bags. After talking through the process with Green Apple kids and parents, Marge set to work readying her sewing machine while the kids used recycled crayons to make patterns on old t-shirts of their choice. Some made stars, others made numbers and there were those whose abstractions could have passed for Pollock’s. After a parent carefully used a hot iron to make the designs permanent, Marge snipped and stitched and Whallah! fashionable ‘new’ bags for all. The library supplied books for each bag through the Reading is Fundamental (RIF) program and every Green Apple Kid left with an organic green apple.

Below are the three simple steps it takes to create your own 'tee bag' at home:







Have a look at our pictures below of kids decorating and modeling their tee bags (there are lots of pics this week):

Presenter Marge Mendel modeling a tee bag.


Elzbieta Krawczuk explaining the RIF program.