Fourth graders at The Cambridge School are used to working on top of their desks, but this time they were instructed to work under them. To help her students relive Michelangelo’s experience painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Mrs. Naomi Ching asked them to paint the “Creation of Adam,” a small central section of the enormous fresco. After tracing a projection of the painting on the wall, the students taped a section to the underside of their desks and painted it while lying face up on the floor.
Mrs. Ching wanted the students to get a sense of the huge scale of Michelangelo’s work, which is difficult to understand just by looking at it in a book. She also wanted them to better appreciate Michelangelo’s skill and artistry. They were impressed that even just tracing the painting was incredibly difficult, and they couldn’t help but notice how their final work paled in beauty compared to Michelangelo’s. Another objective was to give the students a memorable experience that made what they had been learning about the Renaissance period in their textbooks come to life.
Head of School Jean Kim summarizes how this project (and many others like it in all of the school’s classrooms) fit in well with the Cambridge’s overarching goals: “Our aim is to instill in our students a love of learning and an appreciation for all that is true, good and beautiful. When our students work on projects that bring history, science and art ‘to life,’ we nurture a love of learning and engage our students in the great ideas of our civilization—all to the end of cultivating wise and virtuous leadership in the next generation.”