Chapter 20: Arts & Crafts is way to enhance creativity in learners
Date: 1st July 2024 Monday 1:18 pm & 2:30 pm
This is another interesting post about arts and crafts. I remember writing about the newspaper arts and crafts activity with the amazing learners at the Ranaa Child Welfare Foundation in Peshawar. As shared earlier Ranaa Child Welfare Foundation is a school for street children in Peshawar, which is doing an awesome job providing quality education to street children in Peshawar. I am honoured to play my part in providing quality education to these learners with immense support and encouragement from Ranaa Child Welfare Foundation. This post will focus an two lessons that were taught before Eid ul Azha. The students made wonderful Eid cards for their teachers and they made an amazing painting using brush strokes.
Let us look at the first lesson , I was exploring online arts and crafts activities when I came across a simple yet interesting art activity that I could easily do with the learners. This activity was found on the Facebook page titled “Arts of Poppy”. I got the resources for the learners including white charts, plain white sheets of paper, water colors, paint brushes, glue sticks etc. I tried the painting activity myself and it come out really nice. The artist made the painting by using different brush strokes to create flowers and leaves. In the beginning of the lesson I demonstrated to learners on how to use the brush and make strokes in a circular way to make flowers. Then again the same brush would be used to make leaves. Every time I forgot I could replay the video and observe as many times I watched the video. I gave learners the resources and asked them to follow the instructions but make their own designs instead of replicating mine.
I shared with the learners about the video of the painting and I showed them the video on my mobile. It was not that effective since the screen was small and everyone wanted to see the video. But it did help convey the idea more clearly. The learners could actually see how the artist was moving the brush to create different strokes. I was amazed at the learners they could create some wonderful patterns on their sheets of paper. A few of them took double sheets and made some eye catching designs. It was a different learning experience for them. It was an opportunity to be creative. They all used different colors and made colorful flowers and leaves. I took pictures and shared them on schools social media page. The paintings were pasted on the standing board in class. If the lesson was to be repeated I could get proper canvas for learners with different brush sized and lots of water colors for painting. I could also let them explore some patterns and designs on YouTube video. I could create a play list of some painting videos and share the list with the learners. They could view them on the laptops and choose a deign or pattern of their choice to create on the canvas. That would be great actually.
In the next lesson, I gave learners the charts, color pencils, markers and water colors. The objective was to create Eid cards for their teachers at Ranaa Child Welfare Foundation. The learners started making drawings on their Eid cards. When I observed most of them using markers I suggested they use water colors and come up with unique designs. When I observed again they felt stuck with ideas. So I googled some images for Eid cards and I showed it to the learners. That was an effective move and the learners Eid cards reflected some of those ideas. I showed the Eid card designs on my mobiles, this could have been done on the laptop. The learners could have explored some designs and created wonderful Eid cards. At time we all need a nudge in the right direction. It helps open doors to creativity.
I also helped a few learners while they were painting, I suggested some ideas and I also created a card using water colors. It was effective since the learners got the gist and idea of what was expected of them. The next step was to write an Eid greeting in English for their teachers. I wrote a greeting on one of the cards and suggested they write the same too. It was a good way to teach learners on how to write a greeting politely and humbly in English. It improves hand writing too. I was happy with the outcomes of the activity. The Eid cards were shared on social media Facebook too.
Overall it was a good lesson with minimal but effective use of technology. The lesson reflected a balanced blend of traditional and ICT resources. I would though want to review certain practices with technology. If the whole class needs to see an important video for demonstration purposes, the video could be played using a multimedia projector and laptop. The play list of YouTube videos could be saved and shared with learners on the laptops in a Google doc. There is a risk of randomly opening YouTube videos, the advertisements that appear on side bars can be inappropriate age wise for the learners. These videos could be Eid cards or painting. I would want to try out a painting activity sometime later. Also the leaners could type their greeting in google doc, they could print and paste them on their Eid cards. This will look more neat and professional too. The learners could skim through some Eid greetings and write their own greeting after exploring some ideas. They could also use Google Translate to convert eid greeting in English to Urdu. They could also try creating digital Eid cards online and either email or download , send to their teachers. The Eid cards could be shared on a Google Site too.
Enjoy reading till my next post soon InnShaaAllah.
Regards and prayers
Sheeba Ajmal
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