The EC students of The Innovative School visited the Miller Outdoor Theater and the Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday - April 21, 2011.
Theater is a vital part of a child's fine arts education as it brings to life literature studies. This performance of the Princess and the Pea produced by Express Children's Theatre generously underwritten by The Brown Foundation allowed Innovative students to experience a bilingual story of a prince who wants to marry a princess, but is having difficulty finding a suitable wife. The students discover only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through a quantity of bedding. The surprise ending was that the prince and princess decide to be best friends forever instead of getting married and living happily ever after.
After the play, students enjoyed lunch at Café Express at the Museum of Fine Arts. The restaurant management was pleasantly surprised to see our students sitting down respectfully with their napkins neatly folded on their laps waiting patiently for everyone to begin. The manager mentioned twice, "this is the most well behaved group of children I have ever seen here". Our response was "These are Montessori children". After lunch, our students visited the impressionist exhibit at the MFAH. They were thrilled to finally see in real life, paintings from the artists they have been studying all year. The striking, thick paint strokes of Van Gogh's self portrait was so amazing to see up close. Many of the girls were excited by the large Renoir's Ballerina and then to find Degas' small Ballerina painting. After looking at pictures in various books so many times throughout the year, it was exhilarating to see the work in reality. We look forward to deepening the artist studies next academic school year!
