Teaching Tumbling Tiles

So I taught the Tumbling Tiles lesson to middle schoolers today. Big class, but I noticed one section of boys was really getting into it, making geometric designs...

















After class, they went outside, and their teacher called me out to see.... those same four boys were putting their tiles together to make a big collaborative piece, spontaneously--nobody told them to do this, they just understood the lesson. Whoo-hooo!





















Thanks guys!

More Resources for Tumbling Tiles

Docent art, from the Friday workshop

Did you enjoy the training workshop for Tumbling Tiles? Are you looking forward to teaching the lesson? Great!

Here are some more resources for the background material:

Terrific Tiles: an accessible e-book (by me!) of photos similar to my slideshow today.

More about the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and how it relates to medieval Islamic tilework.

Isfahan in Iran has been named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Here's a gallery of images from a UNESCO website of the Meidan Emam, Isfahan.

Here's a nice website of Moorish tilework in Sevilla, Spain.

More about William Morris's designs for tiles (with a lot of images).

The MOMA page about Frank Stella.

An interview with artist Valerie Jaudon, conducted by fellow artist Shirley Kaneda.

Also, here's more information about The Power of Art event, the next two weekends.

And away we go! Tumbling Tiles

Are you ready for the first project? Tumbling Tiles kicks off our 2011-2012 season. Here are some photos from the Thursday morning docent training workshop: