Explore the Art of Arcimboldo in Your Schoolyard

Conference participants work on creating a vegetable and herb masterpiece, inspired by Arcimboldo.

Green Schoolyards America was honored to feature the work of our esteemed colleague, Susan Humphries, MBE, MA, at a two-day conference in the San Francisco Bay Area on September 27-28, 2019. Ms. Humphries traveled from England to share her expertise in teaching methods that are based on hands-on outdoor experiences and a deep understanding of both child development and the natural world. The conference included 12 hands-on workshops that explored Ms. Humphries educational philosophy and her amazingly creative, engaging curriculum ideas.

This is one of the portraits created by conference participants during the workshop.

This article is the first in a series intended to share some of what we learned from Susan Humphries during her visit, and focuses on a special art lesson that is also connected to history, agriculture, and food.

We are grateful for Full Belly Farm’s generous donation of beautiful organic vegetables, fruits, and herbs used in our conference workshop and shown in the images below.

Create a Portrait Inspired by Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593) was an artist with a fascination for plants, and especially vegetable forms. He became a resident court painter for Emperor Maximillian at his court in Vienna, Austria and was given free rein to indulge his interests. The result was a set of ingenious masterpieces which were added to the royal collection. Many of Arcimboldo’s paintings were portraits rendered using the forms of vegetables, fruits, and other plants to convey their subject. Today, many of his works can be viewed at the National Art Gallery in Vienna and online. 

Conference participants select produce from the central display as they begin their vegetable portraits.

In our conference workshop, participants worked with a wide assortment of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and dried beans, that were generously donated by Full Belly Farm, and also purchased from local stores and gathered from our gardens. To begin, we spread a clean sheet on the mulch-covered school playground, and participants arranged the produce in an artful display. We gathered our workshop group around the display and reviewed all of the names of each item, passing some unfamiliar items around the circle so that they could be examined more closely. Next, we discussed Arcimboldo’s work and reviewed images of some of his most famous paintings to understand his artistic style. (Images of Arcimboldo’s work can be viewed on this website.)

Our goal for this workshop—which was limited by a 25 minute time frame—was to work in groups to create temporary vegetable portraits inspired by Arcimboldo’s style and process. Participants split into small groups of 2-4 people, and each began creating their vegetable portraits on their own sheet of cloth, on the ground. Before long, each group had created their own masterpiece!

We closed our session with a “gallery walk” to enjoy and discuss each group’s creations. After the gallery walk, participants photographed their work and then returned the produce to the central display where they made another artful arrangement for the next workshop group to use in the same way. If we had had more time, we could have also taken Arcimboldo’s approach one step farther, and painted pictures using the vegetable portraits as still life models for the finished painted works.

At the end of the day, the produce was still in excellent condition, having been handled very gently, and was given to the host school to cook in its kitchen, as Ms. Humphries always did with her own students when she was the principal of The Coombes School.

We hope you will try this lesson with students you work with, and that you will share your photos of your artistic adventures with us!

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A detailed description of the curriculum lesson described in this article is included in a free online book Green Schoolyards America created with Susan Humphries entitled, Experiential Outdoor Learning in the Schoolyard. Please visit our schoolyard activity webpage to download your own copy. You will find this lesson about Arcimboldo on page 9 of this publication.

Successful Conference: Experiential Learning in the Schoolyard

Conference attendees released homing pigeons at the end of the first day of the conference in a session led by Susan Humphries and pigeon expert Bill Milestone. Releasing pigeons presents a wide range of potential curriculum ties including: geography, the history of communication technology, flight aerodynamics, and biological homing mechanisms. It also presents opportunities to teach empathy and spark wonder, while having an enjoyable experience in a very memorable way.

Green Schoolyards America was honored to feature the work of our esteemed colleague, Susan Humphries, MBE, MA, at a two-day conference in the San Francisco Bay Area on September 27-28, 2019. Ms. Humphries traveled from England to share her expertise in how to use school grounds to foster children’s learning, play, and happiness. She brought a wealth of knowledge in teaching methods that are based on hands-on outdoor experiences and a deep understanding of both child development and the natural world.

The conference was held on the beautiful grounds of Golestan School in El Cerrito, California, which was an ideal venue for the 12 hands-on workshops over the course of the event. We extend a heartfelt thank you to Golestan School for warmly welcoming us and opening their grounds for this special event!

Susan Humphries shared her perspective and ideas with vibrant slideshows on each day of the event, and conference participants engaged in a lively discussion with her.

Learning from Coombes

Each morning, the conference began with a different keynote presentation by Ms. Humphries. She shared her experiences transforming the curriculum and grounds of The Coombes School in Berkshire, England, where she was the founding principal and led the school for almost 40 years. She explained that when she started her work at Coombes, the setting was very basic—just a wide open grassy field and a small patch of asphalt. Over the years, she and her students and their school community planted hundreds of trees on the 6 acre site, transforming it into a biologically rich woodland environment that offered endless opportunities for teachers to teach outside and for children to explore the natural world around them. The photographs below show this remarkable transformation.

views of the coombes school in 1971 and 1985 (above) show the change that occurred on school grounds over time, as Ms. Humphries, her students, and their school community planted hundreds of trees on the 6 acre site. Photos by Susan humphries.

Hands-on Workshops

After Ms. Humphries’s morning presentations, participants engaged in 6 hands-on outdoor workshops each day, related to the examples she gave during her slideshows. The workshops blended poetry, visual art, art display, and performance, with science, math, experiential history, and writing. Many of the activities emphasized hands-on investigation, observation skills, analysis, teamwork, and symbolism. Others highlighted the magic and wonder of the natural world, a sense of place, reflection, empathy, and peace.

The photographs below offer glimpses of the workshops in action. We will post additional blogs in the coming weeks that highlight the workshops in more detail.

New free publication

After the conference, Green Schoolyards America worked with Ms. Humphries to capture the essence of our hands-on workshops in written form. We are very pleased to be able to share a short new book of outdoor learning ideas, based on the conference’s workshops and Ms. Humphries’s work at Coombes. We hope that you—our readers—will try these activities with students at your own local schools.

Please click here to download your own free copy of this new publication entitled, Experiential Outdoor Learning in the Schoolyard. We also hope you will use these schoolyard curriculum ideas in conjunction with the additional schoolyard activities found in our companion publications available for free on the same webpage.

We greatly enjoyed Susan Humphries’s visit, and learned so much from her while she was here. We hope schools across the Bay Area (and beyond) will incorporate her educational philosophy and curriculum ideas into their own practice. As you try the outdoor learning ideas in this publication with your own students, please write to us to tell us about your schoolyard adventures.

Thank you, volunteers!

Green Schoolyards America would like to thank our wonderful, dedicated conference volunteers who helped to lead the workshops and ensured that the event ran smoothly! You are all amazing and greatly appreciated! Thank you again, Golestan School, for hosting the conference on your lovely school grounds. And thank you, Susan Humphries for coming to California to share your expertise and wisdom with us. We are grateful for our wonderful community of partners.

A heartfelt thank you to our wonderful Conference volunteErs and Collaborators! Left to right: Susan Humphries (visiting speaker), Mary Roscoe, Shari Wilson, Kim Walker, Richard Parker, Lisa Howard, Sharon danks (GSA Executive Director). Volunteers not pictured: Maryam Atai, Ayden Danks, Yalda Modabber, Wanda Stewart.

Announcing a Hands-on Conference with Inspiring School Ground Innovator, Susan Humphries: Sept. 27-28, 2019

An outdoor lesson in progress at The Coombes School, within a child-planted forest.
Photo: © Sharon Danks

Green Schoolyards America is honored to announce that we will have a very special visitor this fall, in town from England! Our colleague, Susan Humphries, MBE, MA, will join us in the San Francisco Bay Area at the end of September to share her expertise and deep understanding of how to use school grounds to foster children’s learning, play, and happiness.

Ms. Humphries will collaborate with Green Schoolyards America to lead a two-day, professional development conference that shares what she has learned over her 40+ year career as one of the green schoolyard field’s international founders. She brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in teaching methods that are based on outdoor experiences and an understanding of the natural world.

Save the dates!

September 27 – 28, 2019

DAY 1: Hands-on Teaching and
Learning in a Green Schoolyard

DAY 2: Making the Most of
Asphalt-Covered School Grounds

Timing: 9:00 am - 3:30 pm, both days
Location: Hosted by Golestan School, El Cerrito, CA

Our conference program is designed for preschool and elementary school teachers, and will also be well suited to after school and childcare staff, educators in non-formal settings, garden teachers, designers of children’s environments, and members of the public interested in children’s wellbeing, learning, and play.

The program will include a keynote presentation each day with vibrant examples drawn from Ms. Humphries’s inspiring work at The Coombes School in Berkshire, England, where she was the Founding Headteacher (principal) and led the school for almost four decades. The program will also include hands-on workshops designed to bring her teaching philosophy and methodology to life, and provide resources and ideas that participants will be able to use at their own schools after the conference.

A music lesson in progress on the asphalt playground at The Coombes School.
Photo: © Sharon Danks

More information about the speaker:

Susan Humphries, MBE, MA, is the Founding Headteacher of The Coombes School in Berkshire, England. She led the school from 1971 to 2002, and remained involved with their program and landscape development for an additional decade after her retirement. In 2011, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden to acknowledge the foundations she has laid in building individual and group responsibility for healthy ecosystems and use of natural resources. In 2012, Humphries collaborated with her colleague Susan Rowe to write a book called The Coombes Approach: Learning through an Experimental and Outdoor Curriculum, to share teaching methods used at the school. In 2018, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International School Grounds Alliance to recognize the formative impact her ideas have had on the green schoolyard movement across the globe.

Enrollment:

This conference is open to the public. Click here for more detailed information about the event and how to enroll. We hope you will join us for this special event!

Conference organizers:

This conference is a project of Green Schoolyards America, in collaboration with Susan Humphries. It will be hosted by our partners at Golestan Education, on their beautiful school grounds in El Cerrito, CA.