Beauty

Summer programming came to an end with Fold & Cut Day, and it was one beautiful day, let me tell you.

It was beautiful to watch the sustained concentration. With just a small introduction to the projects, including my own work as inspiration, kids made their choices and got busy.

It was beautiful to find that some kids were using the materials at hand to create and think for themselves outside the project parameters.

Beautiful to watch them choose something really challenging. Beautiful to watch the intense concentration of six boys working together for an hour to figure this out for themselves.

What is a hole? Some sort of something that is taken away to leave nothing. Something that is hard to make if you haven't spent much time with scissors.  In an hour, most had figured out how to cut away both outsides and insides and, in the process, make something into something else.

There was clearly beauty in the process as they experimented with the materials - different folds, different cuts, different results. Cut, evaluate, try again.

Beauty in precision.

Transformation. Symmetry. Design. Choice. Independent. Self-directed. Math. From our own hands.

Beauty.