"As a student, my favorite class was a puppetry class I took there (circa early 1980's). I remember I made a clown puppet. My mother still has my Egyptian-style jewelry that I made in Jerri's class. I think that was the teacher's name...later, when I was in college, I was an assistant and a student in her classes.
As a TU Art student & post-college I worked at Philbrook as a teacher. I primarily taught pre-school classes. One of my best memories was lining the kids up single file. Then, starting at the house, they walked in a single file line with big spaces in-between each child. They would walk across the meadow towards, what I think was, the summer house. I told them ahead of time what would happen so they wouldn't be scared. I told them to keep their arms crossed or hands in their pockets and walk very slow, shuffling their feet as they went. And every time it would happen: the barn swallows would dive and swirl around the kids like agile fighter pilots and hunt the bugs that were being stirred up into the air as the kids walked.
It was such a beautiful sight! The electric blue backs and the orange belly's of the barn swallow flickering as they flew past the kids. The birds would weave in and out between the children and the children would giggle with delight. I discovered this by accident once when we were out playing a game of "red rover". We did this with every class from there on out.
The gardens were truly a magical place for me and my class. We pretended the gazebo was a rocket ship and I would do the countdown for blast off. We would land on the moon and when we left the rocket ship we would walk on the moon’s zero gravity surfaces. "Bouncing" in slow motion on the surface, we explored this new planet. There use to be a cluster of bushes near by the gazebo that the kids used as a hide out. From the outside you couldn't see anyone in them...but inside the bushes were like umbrellas. The perfect club house!
We played a game called “Statue”. Along the walls in the garden area there were empty nooks for vases or statues. I would call out an animal or character and they would “freeze” into that statue inside the nook.
We gathered materials for our art projects in the gardens; leaves, sticks, mossy cups, butterfly wings, feathers, magnolia seeds, etc. We had a blast learning about texture, using crayons rubs outside. One year the theme was archaeology. We had one class make the artifacts out of clay and bury them on the grounds. Another class got to dig them up! Very cool, I even learned a lot from this class!
I don't live in Tulsa anymore but if I did, I know that my family would be there many, many, many times! It is definitely a stop on our visits which are far too sparse. Sigh, all this is making me miss my Philbrook!"
-Michelle Petty (Michelle Youngblood when she was at Philbrook)
