Learning About Masks

       After the training workshops, our parent and grandparent volunteers ventured into classrooms throughout the city to share this lesson with the children. Joan Ellis, a long-time volunteer at Petroglyph Elementary School, introduced Courtney Silecchia’s second grade class to African masks. These are some sketches they made as they looked at slides from the lesson. Aren’t they great?  Joan also read them one of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories” – How the Elephant Got His Trunk.  One student got so interested in the masks and observed so carefully, he went home and made a mask out of cardboard and various found objects – before the mask making session in the classroom! Ms. Silecchia has it hanging in her room. I love the yarn eyebrows.