Artasia at BGC Ellis

There are always kids who seem too shy or uninterested to participate in our programming, but I realized over the last five weeks that we are often too quick to assume that we understand the motivations behind their hesitations, or to define what it really means to ‘participate’ in an activity. 

In my last week of programming at the Wesley BGC Ellis EarlyON location, to avoid overwhelming the children I adjusted the general ‘food-making’ activity into one that mostly focused on fruits. I provided them with a ‘fruit salad’ bowl (made out of paper) and a few examples of fruits I made out of felt, and before long there were already some kids trying to reflect upon their favourite fruits, what colours they should use to make them, etc. There was one boy who, after I asked him whether he wanted to make some fruit with us, merely shook his head and left us to go sit alone at the other end of the room. At first I brushed this off as him being timid or uninterested in art-making, (and I didn’t want to pressure him after he set his boundaries), but after a few minutes he approached our table carrying a tray of fruits and vegetables all made out of plastic. He collected these toys from the ‘dining table’ (a fake toyset) that was across the room and handed them all out to us, but remained quiet after I thanked him. He repeated this a few more times (always in silence) before ultimately deciding to join our table towards the end of our session. While he did end up making a banana out of yellow felt, he was mostly interested in grabbing the fake (paper) spoon I cut out and using it to mix the fruit the other kids created in the collective food bowl to make sure everything “stayed fresh”.

I was delighted to see the various ways in which kids choose to participate in our activities, but this one was definitely the most memorable for me. 

Lauren Misiaszek