Innovative and Community Spirit

Innovative and Community Spirit

As the solutions provider for waste handling and recycling, Harmony Enterprises takes pride in our innovative and community spirit.  Our talented sales team and engineers work with our customers to make sure their quality balers and compactors meet their specific needs. Its our innovation that allows us to continue to grow and meet the demands of the ever-changing marketplace.

With growth comes success, and Harmony Enterprises understands the importance of sharing that success with the greater community.

An extremely creative collaboration recently took place between Fillmore Central High School’s Art Department and Harmony Kids Learning Center that mirrors these same ideas of innovation and shared success.

A Creative Collaboration

The project started with talks this summer between former teacher Tonya Keim and FC Art Instructor, Carrie Mathison.  Both teachers had seen a similar idea on social media going around and wanted to pursue doing it with their students.

The idea was to have the 4-5 year old students in Kinzee Hovey’s HKLC class create their own monsters on paper, followed by Mrs. Mathison’s commercial design art class recreating them in 3-D form.  The high school class would then present their creations as gifts to the youngsters in the learning center.

With the help of their teacher, the learning center students all completed a worksheet about their ideal monster.  The worksheet asked what their monsters name was, it’s favorite color, what it liked to eat and what it is scary or fun.  The 4/5 students then chose from 5 different shapes to design in such as rectangle, square, circle, triangle or heart.  Ms. Kinzee incorporated this worksheet into a unit for her class last fall and passed off the color copies of the students sheets to Mrs. Mathison at the high school.

In the high school commercial design class, students were first required to complete basic sewing techniques on a variety of fabrics before attempting to re-create the 3-D monsters.  Once these initial projects were all complete, each student picked out a monster to create from the 4/5 preschool designs.

The high school students needed to utilize innovative problem-solving to create the monsters.  To make the monsters, students started with 2 pieces of fabric or felt (one for the front and one for the back) and then had to design on these.  The fronts mostly were created according the the 4/5 designs, but the backs of the monsters allowed for greater creativity.  Artists were encouraged to add stripes, patches, spots and even pockets.  Students also needed to attach legs and arms, if needed, which required cutting, sewing, reversing, stuffing and then attaching.  Last minute details, like hair, were attached before sewing the front and backs together inside out.  Students then needed to reverse, stuff, and hand stitch each monster shut.  This process took about three weeks, with Commercial Design students working 45 minutes a day on them.  Often, problem solving and learning a new process took some extra time for students.  But, this type of innovation allowed them to create the correct solution, or 3D monster, for the younger students.

Last week, the high school commercial design class paid a special visit to HKLC and presented each of the 4/5 students with their own real-life 3D monster!  The young students were beyond excited to see their monsters “come to life”!  A few of them still even bring their monster for nap time at the learning center.

Harmony Enterprises manufactures balers, compactors, and beverage extraction equipment for satisfied customers around the world.  One of our Core Values is Innovation and our Core Purpose involves Community.  We thank and congratulate both the Fillmore Central Art Department and Harmony Kids Learning Center for recognizing the importance of their innovative and community spirit, as well as the benefits of giving back to your greater community.  Well done!