Oscar the otter showed up in studio today. He is a sage advisor for the kids, having travelled the world to meet all the animal species. He will correspond with the kids in the coming weeks-- they put letters in his mailbox and he will write them back, answering questions about their chosen animal's features or sharing his experiences and opinions. The kids were very excited to get to know Oscar, and many letters were put in his mailbox during his first week in studio.

Owen has been studying about the octopus. We got an extra supply of suction cups to make sure he had the materials he would need to do his material exploration!

At circle time, Lerato made a shadow puppet theater. We asked the kids to try to guess which animal their classmates were creating, and most of the time they guessed correctly, after a few tries a an occasional hint. 

One big part of the studio today was for each student to begin researching their chosen animal, and which features might be interesting to use as inspiration moving forward. The kids were given books, articles, photos, and google search results to fill out their animal research which went either in their design journals or on bigger sheets of paper, which allowed for some first exploratory drawings.

The studio was busy busy busy during this session. Some kids seem to find inspiration in the shop, while others are getting acquainted with the sewing machine. It's inspiring seeing how they are putting materials together and thinking about what they're making in unique and thoughtful ways.