When 8-year-old Fiona Haverland misses her former home of Alaska, all she has to do is look at a mosaic that will soon adorn the entrance of her elementary school.
Fiona, a third-grader at East Silver Spring Elementary School, is among a group of students who worked with North Potomac artist Carien Quiroga to design and create "Many Little Seeds," a mosaic of the plant life cycle. As part of the design process, each child put his or her own stamp on the project by creating embossed metal tiles featuring wildlife scenes.
For Fiona, the decision to etch a sun setting behind mountains on her tile was easy.
"I miss Alaska where I used to live, so I made that scene," she said of her embossing as she used a Popsicle stick to spread cement on the backs of the tiny square tiles for the mosaic.
The school received a $2,750 grant from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, according to science teacher Dawn Moffitt. Coupled with additional funding from the parent-teacher association, Moffitt was able to buy materials and bring in Quiroga and 23-year-old assistant Lester Garcia for the project.
The six-day undertaking is not just an art project, Moffitt says. The kids wrote poems about nature, read about seeds and learned to list adjectives about seed growth. The design of the mosaic, which features seeds at various stages of growth and displays sun, water, soil and methods of seed dispersal, also gave the children an important lesson in biology, Moffitt said. And as they worked on laying out the tiles, she said, the children used measuring and multiplication skills, as well.
"It's better, because it's hands-on," she said. "Science is often hands-on, but it's harder to be hands-on with reading and writing."
Constructing the mosaic makes learning fun and active, Quiroga said.
"Even though this is still pretty structured, it doesn't feel that way," she said. "They don't realize how much they're learning."
As the students shuffle through the classrooms in groups of 12, they giggle with each other as they carefully cement the tiles into the work-in-progress.
Fiona said mosaic is her favorite type of art, because it allows her to talk to her friends as she works. And tiling has taught her how to be "less clumsy and more neat," she said. Fellow students Absa Fall and Kevin Awoufack also struggle to stay clean. The material doesn't come off their clothes, they said, so they carefully keep their sticky hands from touching their outfits.
The students work with a mix of brown, gold, green and blue tiles, some of which are sparkly and some that have less of a sheen. They lay them close together and in one direction, and they're quick to correct each other if someone is not following directions. As they work, their excitement over creating a lasting legacy at their school shines through.
"We've done things like this before, but usually we just watch the artist," said 8-year-old Avery Todd. "Now we're actually getting to do it all."
Quiroga said she loves working on mosaics with these children, because despite their short stature and young age, she doesn't have to teach down to them, and their masterpiece will have the same lasting impact as anything done by high-school students or adults.
"If I'm teaching a third-grader or a high schooler, the outcome may be different, but the expectations are the same," she said. "They can be in third grade and be a part of a permanent legacy. They can come back with their grandchildren and see what they made."
