I have been conducting drawing classes for the children in my apartment for 3 months now.
We decided to put up an exhibition of what they created. Other than what they had created in the class, I gathered them to create a Welcome board.
I wrote up each alphabet in 'Welcome' on a piece of paper, and asked them to create a picture from each alphabet ... !
In a span of 20 minutes, the children came up with so many ideas to creatively extend the alphabet... a man from "W"; snail from "e"; Shoe from "L"; birdie from "C"; swimming pool from "O"; little girl from "M"; and key from "E" !!!
I had been teaching them some techniques and had taught them a couple of creative ideas to draw from alphabets "A" and "Q".
But these 20 minutes the children showed so much potential ...and were so full of ideas ..they really made my day !!! Not only did they exhibit so much creativity but also had a great team work ...bouncing off ideas, helping each other ... !!!
We had been preparing for the exhibition for 3 weeks (3 sundays).. the first Sunday I gave them a theme ("icecream") and they came up with their own ideas and drew them up.
The second week, they had to draw something that I had taught them in class. Most children drew the 'hand turkey' ; one of them drew the duck (from alphabet "S") ; and an older child drew the tree from life.
The last week was when they had to make the welcome board.
Each week, the last 15 minutes was spent in giving each other feedback on their painting. I made it clear that they had to call out only what they liked about somebody's painting. This helped to a large extent that they focussed on actually observing what the other person had created, and I was quite impressed at how objective they were with their comments ... "I like the way S. has shaded this part..." or "I like the color combination A. has used for the bird's feathers" ...!
They were so excited the 2 days before the exhibition. They kept following up with me on when I was going to put up the posters inviting people to attend. I had also told them that they could sell their paintings, and that got them all the more kicked about the whole thing ! Some children had even made additional paintings at home and brought them along for display !
The exhibition was just for an hour, but all of them came down to the venue (our apartment clubhouse) a good 45 minutes ahead of time and helped with putting up the paintings. I was mighty impressed with this kind of enthusiasm ... !
Then we decided we would sell each painting for 10 bucks, and also more importantly that it was displaying their painting was the most important thing to do, and they should not be hung up on selling their paintings !
There were just 10 visitors that actually showed up, but the children managed to sell a painting each !!
It was a great ending for the 3 weeks of awesome effort the children had put in !!!
Here is the link to the exhibits.... https://picasaweb.google.com/mangalam.nandakumar/ChildrensExhibition
