Stained Glass With Stella's Pop-Pop

March 4, 2013

Stella's mom, Kristina and her dad visited with our Cardinal class this morning to introduce our children  to world of stained glass art . Stella's Pop-Pop is an artist who works with all types of colored glass to create beautiful designs and pictures.  We learned  that he uses special tools to cut glass as well as to assemble pieces of glass together to create a picture or design.  We learned that glass is made of sand that is put into a very, very hot oven and that the colors of glass are created by adding metals such as gold. Gold added to clear glass turns the glass into red glass!

Pop-Pop first demonstrated how he uses the tools to separate and cut the glass and he suggested that we listen closely to the sounds the tools make as he moves them along the glass. The children were captivated by his engaging demonstration and you could have heard a pin drop as we listened and watched as he cut the colored green glass! Pop-Pop introduced the concept of patterns and showed the children a book of patterns that one may use if they wanted to create a particular picture such as an  animal or bird out of glass. We learned that the glass pieces fit together like a puzzle!  The children passed around small finished edge glass samples to touch and explore.

 All of the children had the opportunity to use the special glass cutting tools with Pop-Pop.  What a special experience!

 Kristina suggested a fun way for the children to become stained glass artists using tissue paper, paper frames and clear contact paper.  Kristina used decorative hole punchers to create shapes with colored tissue paper and the children  then covered the sticky paper with the tissue shapes. We were able to see how the daylight changed the colors and how beautiful our windows and classroom became after hanging them up. The children loved spending time with Stella's mom and Pop-Pop.  Connecting home and school and building community is most important to all of us.

We concluded our art visit with a walk to Upper School where we had the opportunity to see the beautiful stained glass installation that Pop-Pop made on Student Street that will stay at Abington Friends forever!

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