Cluny Students Learn to Be Little Picassos

"I want to see a dot explosion!" Christina Marley proclaims as she passes by her group of children, all who are busy painting multi-color designs with cotton swabs.

The Cluny School students have just imprinted their art paper with paintings of their feet. Now, they must creatively decorate around it.

School may be out for the students, but many of them have returned to partake in one of the Cluny School's summer camps. The first of the summer was this arts and crafts camp, held June 28 to July 2.

"It's fantastic," Marley said of the program. "They really look forward to it. It's great exposure for the school, and it's a lot of fun. I've had a lot of these children in class before."

The students started the week making tie-dye t-shirts, and moved on to paint watercolor images of sea creatures, make suns, rainbows and clouds out of household items, and put together their own paper-maché objects. On Wednesday, June 30, the students were testing their abstract art skills. In addition to decorating those images of their feet, they also had the chance to paint with marbles, moving them back and forth inside an aluminum cake pan, and drop spoonfuls of different-colored paint inside a salad spinner. That activity was one of the most popular with the children, as they depressed the spinner's button and anxiously awaited for it to slow down so they could see the unique design they'd created.

"Why do you think the paint will spread around?" Marley asked the students before they began the project.

"Because it's been spinning!" one little girl proclaimed.

"Right, because the force will move it around."

Marley, a pre-K teacher at the school, said planning the week's activities was a great experience for her.

"I love being creative, so this was really fun for me," she said, noting that this is the first year Cluny has hosted an arts and crafts camp.

In addition to that program, students attending in July partook in a special two-week storytelling camp.

While the Cluny camps were mostly made up of their own students, Marley said the school's programs are open to anyone.