June 13th FIGMENT Review

This past weekend Green Apple Kids hopped on the summer ferry and joined a large collection of artists and art-lovers at the 2009 FIGMENT Festival on Governor’s Island. We brought some noise to the wild and crazy event by helping kids make ‘shaggy shakers’ from recycled bottles and shredded paper.

We learned a lot from the kids that stopped by. Some turned their bottles into characters with facial features, others used the shag to make grass skirts and almost everyone immediately composed an impromptu percussive melody. Unfortunately the Mobile Art Parade that was to be the culmination of our day’s work got rained on, but kids could be heard shaggily shaking around the island, drawing attention to the importance of recycling.

We’d like to say a big ‘Thank You’ to Bill Elliston, the children's activity curator who helped us so much throughout the planning and execution of our art project.

Here are some pictures from the Green Apple Kids table (unfortunately our camera died so we only got pictures of about half of our shaker makers) :










































End of day at the GAK table (pic by Keiko)

And here are some cute pictures of other FIGMENT activities we just had to share:


Riding the cloud car




City of Dreams miniature golf


Mask making


Kiddie costumes


Flower pool


DIY hula hoop decorating


The Wishing tree

(all above pics by Keiko)

June 6th Workshop Review

Our latest workshop was full of yummy goodness. Sarah Poten, our presenter from Greenmarket, gave us many interesting facts about our foods. Such as:

1) The color of the chicken's feathers determines the color of the eggs. So brown eggs come from brown chickens, white eggs come from white chickens, and green eggs come from a special South American chicken with green feathers around its neck (the jury's still out on green ham).

2) Though purple and white carrots are funky finds at New York's farmers markets, they used to traditionally be the norm. Some time ago a queen (we're not sure which one) got the golden colored carrots we're used to seeing now and declared, "Let them eat gold!" And thus we now mostly see orange carrots.

3) Same for potatoes. Red and purple potatoes were upstaged by the cardboard colored variety because they were larger and easier to grow.

4) A great fact to remember when filling reusable bags at your market is that the smaller the fruit or vegetable, the more nutirents it packs per pound. Take that you big, ugly potatoes.

After talking about food, we decided to taste some. A few GAK kids braved the punch of radishes, examined the insides of red and purple potatoes, tasted spinach and chamomile and mint, and wore a few garlic sprouts as jewelry.

When it was all over, we divvied up the bounty of veggies brought in by Sarah, and everyone left with great printouts such as a 'make-your-own-menu' list and a scavenger hunt for their next trip to the market.