Art Art Art

Hello!

This weekend was an art-filled two days.  Besides a few simple crafts and a lot of coloring book pages, these were our first big art projects with the kids. On Saturday, we started out with painting for the older kids.  First, the kids put tape and shapes onto the paper. They then painted the paper with many colors. Our only rule for the kids is that there isn't allowed to be any white space on the paper when they are finished.  Once the paint was dry, we peeled off the shapes and tape from the paper to reveal the negative white space. 
After lunch, we did ripped paper collages with the class 1 students.  The kids first colored the entire paper with crayons in different shapes and colors.  Then, to their great astonishment and, eventually, great pleasure, they ripped the paper into little pieces.  They then glued these pieces to a piece of construction paper in a collage.
 On Sunday, we opened up a classroom at the school for the kids to come in and draw. Eight kids were allowed in the room at one time and were given two pieces of paper for the day.  If needed, we gave simple suggestions about what the kids could draw. Once again, our only rule was "no white", or "hapana color white".  At first, the kids all drew tiny pictures with labels like "hat", "girl", and "house".  All of the pictures were the same and it took a lot of work to get them to think outside of what their teachers had told them about how to draw. Eventually though, we got them to fill the entire page and be creative about what they were drawing and how they were drawing it.  It was a very fun day of coloring that made us really excited for what else the kids can do.  We've already gotten more ideas and will probably be pretty busy the next 3-4 weeks we're at Neema. Well, more busy than we already are.  Sleeping will probably stop happening.
We're exhausted, but happy and can't wait for more.

Below are pictures of the kids doing art and the art itself.  If you have any other project ideas, we'd love to hear them! Especially if they're good for doing with toddlers and a massive language barrier!