By Wilbur Purdue
The Historic Coupeville Arts and Crafts Festival Association has provided a series of grants for special projects occurring within the Coupeville School District. Several teachers put forth grant proposals and we would like to publicly thank the association for their continued support of education.
The Coupeville History Day program received money to assist with the purchase of a new computer. Mr. Purdue will have students use this computer to create documentaries, Web sites, papers, exhibits, and dramatic performances. History Day students volunteer each year to help with the sanitation duties at the festival and have been able to work for their grant each year. Students will be presenting their work at the annual History Day Community Night on March 7.
The elementary art program will use their grant to fund a unit on Japanese art, which will begin Jan. 7 and run until the end of the school year. Students in Ms. Bigelow’s art class will learn about Sumi-e painting, origami, tea ceremonies, and various other art forms. Students will participate in a kite making workshop with Greg Kono of West Seattle and visiting Master Kite Maker Nobuhiko Yoshizumi of Japan.The unit will culminate in an evening of Japanese music and student artwork highlighted by a ceramic firing in the Raku style in which the community is invited to attend.
The fourth grade students from Mrs. Sherman’s class will be using their grant money to write and illustrate a story on the adventures of a tree frog whose habitat has been disturbed and is now living as a pet in a fourth grade classroom. The students will write the story from the frog’s perspective, and then illustrate their book using the techniques of author/illustrator Eric Carle. Integrating language arts and science with the arts provides such a rich experience for the students. And these fourth graders actually do have two pet tree frogs. Before they could have them as pets, however, they were required to research the behaviors of frogs so they could build as authentic a habitat as possible within the classroom.
Fifth graders in Mr. Luvera’s class received a grant from the Historic Coupeville Arts & Crafts Festival Association to purchase digital cameras for a photo-history project. This spring, students will be given the opportunity to study the historic architecture of our town and capture the historic building features on film. They will select pictures they believe best represent time periods in our town’s history and then write and publish their own descriptions of the buildings using the their skills in math, science, U.S. History and writing. The project will result in a published book produced by the fifth grade students.
Coupeville High School art students in Ms. McWilliam’s art class want like to thank the festival for the money received to purchase “Gessobord” brand art panels. They will be creating images with acrylic paint and displaying these pieces in the annual “Arts and Appetizers” exhibit at the Greenbank Farm. (The AAUW American Association of University Women put on this event.)
Our project would not be possible without the kind consideration of the board of directors of the association. Their support, and that of the Historic Coupeville Arts & Crafts Association, makes an incredible difference in our community.
Wilbur Purdue
lives in Coupeville.
