Giant Book!

This summer, I worked as an Education Intern at the Children's Creativity Museum. It was a fabulous experience, both because it was fun and it taught me a lot. We are involved in a lot of tasks, but they are still only a few in the myriad of tasks it takes to run the museum. And not only were us interns working and teaching kids, but we were also learning, from the educators, the kids, and our mistakes. I walked in petrified, but just kept going through all my fumbles-failing forward, if you will-right til the end when I was horrified that it was ending.

Among designing workshops for kids, running the workshops, running the Innovation Lab, attempting to co-ordinate groups, and working in the Imagination Lab, I found Early Birdles. Early Birdles is the morning early childhood development class, which I got to assist the lovely leaders Emmy and Eli with. We have story time, free time, and music time. It involves a lot of singing and dancing and being silly. Amid all the growth I gained from this job from brainstorming to how to approach kids, I personally grew the most from assisting with Early Birdles from putting myself out there, silliness and all, in front of people. It also cheered me up every time I did it, even on days where acting out the story just doesn't seem appealing.

When I arrived, we were encouraged to take on a personal project beyond the regular tasks. I felt awkward and stuck like usual, but then I overheard Eli talking about how he wanted to vamp up the giant storybook we use in Early Birdles, which is opened to two blank pages that are filled with random pictures so that the leaders use to make up a new story every day. I love bookmaking, so I asked if I could take on the challenge and was granted permission. I brainstormed for a long time, I drew up what I thought it would be like. Then I interview both leaders to see what they thought would be useful and we came up with great ways to revamp the book to the next generation. So add a few weeks, a long day of brainstorming and prepping with help from my mother, and I flung myself headlong into the book and finished in a few days. Below is my final product, complete with two magnetic whiteboards, giving the story tellers plenty of options, as well as a storage container in the top of the box for the pieces to live. The cover is adorned with the blue Birdles and Ah-ha, characters from the museum that pertain to Early Birdles.

I am proud of the accomplishment and so grateful for the support and freedom to pursue this from the staff at CCM. Though I may see some technical flaws in my work, I really am happy with how it turned out, especially since it is so freaking big at 2 feet wide by three feet tall by about 8 inches deep! Below are some pictures illustrating the book and its aspects, as well as some pictures of it in the context of the Early Birdles space and action!