Year One: A wonderful year with virtual collaboration!

We finished our unit on Turkey and The Middle East. This has been year one of a two year collaboration between Highcrest School and Long River Middle School. What a wonderful time we each had learning about Turkey and Islamic Art, Religion and Culture. We had a terrific time at the "Meet and Greet" at Highcrest school. Our Islamic tiles came out great! So many wonderful designs. Thanks for a great year everyone!

Office for the Arts at Harvard

Ms. Avery and Mrs. Kopecki attended a three day workshop entitled "Tile and Mural Design and Construction" at the Office for the Arts at Harvard over a course of three Saturdays this past January and February.



The course was led by Dr. Wasma'a Chorbachi, an Art History professor at Harvard University and explored a range of mathematical concepts related to tile design using animal, floral or geometric motifs. They learned many new techniques and design skills as they worked on both raw and fired clay tiles.
The course explored construction methods, decorating skills and principles of Asian, Islamic and European design.












Dr Wasma'a Chorbachi has provided them with a wealth of learning and practical knowledge for their unit on Turkey.

Connections, Connections!

Recently Mrs. Kopecki and I spent a lovely spring day in Boston. With no real agenda in mind, we let our feet do the walking around this historic city and we ended up making quite a few Turkish connections! First stop was lunch at The Kabab House of Boston on Kilby's street, Liberty Square. There we enjoyed some appetizers from the meze bar and shared a Kofte Kebab, which is a mix of lamb and mixed beef patties with rice and mixed salad. Delicious! Next, we stopped at the Granary Burial ground where we saw the graves of several famous Americans such as Paul Revere and Samual Adams. Then we walked around little Italy and had to stop for an afternoon cappucino, before hiking it to The Museum of Fine Arts (for the after 4pm FREE tour of the permanent collections.) After making our way through the ancient East Asian collections and Egyptian collections we found the Islamic wing and found a display of Iznik Pottery as well as other Koptic Korans and Islamic ceramics. We also were excited to see some contemporary pieces by our Islamic Tile professor from Harvard, Wasmaa Chorbachi! She designed some beautiful pieces. Before leaving the museum we were able to buy some Iznik tiles from the museum store! Too cool! (For I never bought one while actually in Turkey).
After hiking it back to the Boston Commons, with a short dinner stop along the way, we ended our delightful in Boston. Though we came to Boston with no plan in mind for the day, we saw and did quite a bit and made lots of connections with our many previous travels and experiences. Life-It's all about the connections!