Transylvania project

I introduced the Transylvania project today. We watched a documentary about the many faces of Dracula and then switched gears to a video about Transylvanian folk dancing. "How do we make sense of this place?" I asked. We have images of horror and darkness on the one hand, and colorful swirling skirts on the other. I had a bunch of library books checked out on the table for students to look at. The books were full of photographs -- fields and sheep, markets with cheese, children in folkloric dress. One student mentioned a disproportionate number of old people and babushkas. There were a number of photographs of the gypsy population, and mountain dwellings with sod roofs. One student (named Sylvia) noted that the root word sylvania means a land of many trees. I let them sketch and make figures out of clay as we listened to music from the region. Next week we will begin to make stop action movies about our Transylvanian musings.