Composition and Design with the Kids Ark Foundation

Hello, everyone! This week we worked with a new organization called the Kids Ark Foundation. They are an extensive after-school program that works with disadvantaged Thai and ethnic minority children. They have three different 'Houses of Hope' and we went to two -- one in Sansai and another in Maejo. On Tuesday we worked with the group at Sansai, there were about twelve children ranging in age from 6 to 15. They were very engaged and excited about working with us, especially with the games we played at the beginning. We had some problems with explaining patterns, as they were supposed to find  patterns in the room around them. Eventually they got the hand of it and the rest of the project was fairly easy for them. 

On Thursday we went to the house in Maejo. There were 32 children also ranging in age from 6-15. They understood the concepts of the project much faster than the first group, but due to the size they were more distracted and less engaged. They did turn out some very nice drawings, though, and some of the children were very creative with their patterns. 

Both of the groups were quite fun to work with and I'm sure we'll do more projects with them in the future.

~ Katelyn and Sarah

Crepe Paper Anemones with Wildflower Home

This week we went to Wildflower Home for another workshop with the young mothers. I decided to show them how to create flowers out of crepe paper.

First we all started to make some simple ones but the more flowers we did the more they differed from the original template so we had a wide range of different colourful and of course beautiful flowers in the end. A wonderful workshop with a lot of joy.

Some examples.

We made a mess!

Old MacDonald's Puppets

Given the recent success of our *spectacular* renditions of some old favourite kid's songs, we took inspiration from "Old MacDonald's farm" to make animal puppets.

We used finger-painting to decorate some pre-cut animal shapes, then added bells for some extra fun.

 Unfortunately, the kids weren't feeling too well, but those that felt up to it enjoyed a rousing few verses of "Old MacDonald", with the puppets joining at all the right places.

The horse is considering a career on Broadway.

Making a mess with Paper Marbeling - Young Lions

We made a fun, creative mess during our workshop with the Young Lions today. The project
involved Paper Marbling using Shaving cream, and food coloring. Participants created their own marbled paper and then used the paper to created a card with stencils.

My Bunny/Butterfly Example

Some of our objectives for the workshop were:

·  To encourage the participants creative exploration of color

·  To encourage the participants creative use of different materials (i.e. shaving cream, food coloring)

·  To provide an activity to focus participants attention

·  To develop fine motor skills in cutting out stencils

·  To have fun!

     I'd say we accomplished all of the above. After putting on our aprons, we spread out some foamy shaving cream on a piece of drawing paper and smoothed it out a bit.

     Using small blobs of color with a paint brush or eye dropper, we made the colors in Rainbow order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Violet.

Next we swirled/marbled the

colors with a kebab stick. We then put paper

on top of the swirled colors and pressed

down hand over the paper. 

 After lifting up the paper, we used a flat edge to scrape the shaving cream off the paper

(this was the kids FAVORITE part....they were scraping up huge blobs of colored shaving

cream.

Shaving Cream hands!!!

Presto! Scraping off the shaving cream reveals Gorgeous Rainbow Marbled Paper!

 

 

 The kids really enjoyed this workshop and I'd highly recommend trying it. Great for all ages. 

                                                 ~Jennifer