catchin up

To keep on catchin up so you'll can catch on to Panther's progress, I'm gonna temporarily skip over bloggin about Mindfest. I'll come back shortly with an extensive blog with my opinions and experiences both of the Kitundu cycle with ALA and the fest itself. But for now, I'll continue at the club with our stop motion animation halloween film festival and our Panther Parent Pizza Party...

Panther Halloween Animation Film Festival

dates: Monday October 24, Wednesday October 26, Friday October 28 and Monday October 31

big idea: With the big annual Panther Halloween Party falling a week after Mindfest, I chose to use that week to review a popular activity, therefore not losing any 2nd or 3rd year teen's interest right off the bat, but also one that would engage new members. In addition, the final products of this week could be displayed for the whole club at the big bash. Hence, creating stop-motion animation films for the Halloween Party.

attendance: descent attendence...Leanthia, Breala, Jonathon, Marcus, Thomas

supplies: laptops, intel play cameras, playdoh, action figures, random craft supplies

best part: the world premier of "Barphman" directed by Marcus Mitchell. Once he got focused, he went all the way with creating a film with effects, dialog and plot. If you're reading this, ask me to show you "Barphman"-you will laugh. It was the big hit at the Film Festival where we had about 35 kids attend. After the premier of the teen's stop-motion films, we watched about 20 minutes of Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas".

hardest part: Getting the older kid's back into it, but once they got it, they took off.

Panther Parent Pizza Party
Wednesday, November 2nd - Having sent fliers home with the teens the previous week and a reminder flier with them on Monday, we held a very successful DesignIT informational meeting for the teens and thier parents. From 5pm to 7pm we held an open studio with various activities for all to try around the conference room, and at 6:30 when pizza arrived we had a formal sit down presentation with Saafir and I speaking. In the presentation we described new policies of memebership including the sign-in sheets, we listed the benefits of attending, and we fielded questions. Though only 3 of the teens parents attended, they appreciated the information we provided and were excited for this opportuntiy for their teen. This was also the most attended DesignIT meeting yet with around 16 teens present and attentive. During open studio, Sammie, Gabe, Crystal, Saafir and myself manned stations of different activities we had either done in the past in DesignIT or would do in the future, including Acid Sreenblast, a sound sculpture built by Panther Teens, and the new activity of light painting. This activity seemed the most popular, as seen in one photo included in this blog, and provided a fantastic introduction to our new cycle the following week, which will be blogged about soon.

Best Part:
Myles - For the parents that did come, they seemed very excited for their child to be in DesignIT.
Sammie - The kids that are in Panther B&GC were so interested in DesignIT and that they needed to be drag away by their parents.
Crystal - We reached a lot of kids who are normally in the program and letting them explore the new projects in the program.

Worst Part:
Myles - none
Sammie – There were some difficulty with the cameras due to room light and we didn’t have back up batteries.
Crystal – Very little parental invlovement, eventhough the parents that were there were very excited about the program.

So, next up to blog about...
-the Kitundu Workshops
-Mindfest
-Light Painting at Panther
-Thaumatropes and two frame flipbooks at Panther

myles