GAK at FIGMENT!

GREAT NEWS! FIGMENT has invited Green Apple Kids to take part in the 2009 roster of arts activities on Governors Island. See the details below:

Have you ever made your own musical instrument? You can at Figment. Green Apple Kids will be helping children and parents construct their own musical instruments using plastic bottles, cans, sticks and other recycled materials. You can use your creation to make music all around the island on your own, hang them up with others for a wind-driven symphony, or even join the merriment of the parade. After making the instruments they may be taken home and hung in windows, so the music will last long after this weekend.

Green Apple Kids
Recycled Wind-powered Instruments
Saturday, June 13th ONLY!
11AM to 4PM

FIGMENT 2009
June 12 – 14
Governors Island, NYC

FIGMENT is an explosion of creative energy on Governors Island. It’s a free, annual celebration of participatory art and culture where everything is possible. For one weekend each summer, it transforms Governors Island into a large-scale collaborative artwork… and then it’s gone.

What are you bringing?

May 2nd Workshop Review

The winds of change blew through our recent Green Apple Kids workshop and got our young inventors thinking about alternative fuel sources. GAK co-founder Beatrice Tinio led the day’s lesson by starting with a picture book focused specifically on the how the suns fuels almost every energy source that exists on the Earth.

When Bea asked the class what makes the wind, parents were amazed to learn that the junior Green Apple attendees where in the correct ballpark. “The sun!” offered one GAK kid, while another added, “Because the sun controls all the weather.” The kids also recognized the differences between fossil fuels and sustainable energy sources (identifying solar panel and embracing the concept of hydro-electricity).

But enough talking, a Green Apple Kids workshop would be incomplete without a fun. hands-on activity. At their respective workstations, the kids decorated the arms of their anemometers (say that three times quickly) and colored one of the 4 cups that catch the wind in order to be able to measure the wind’s velocity. The stem was made from discarded pencils and the base from repurposed modeling clay.

With their anemometers ready, the Green Apple Kids constructed an indoor ‘wind farm’ counting off their cup revolutions (see video below) and then each kid left with a velocity chart in order to record wind speeds in their neighborhoods and advocate for the installation of an energy-producing turbine.