Artasia at Centre de Santé Barton

One week, it was incredibly quiet at Centre de Sante Barton; We only had 3 children arrive for the programming. One of these children was very young, no older than 4, and she immediately was interested in the sparkly pompoms I had in my material kit. The theme that week was space, and the goal was to create an environment on top of a piece of cardboard. We all expected her to beeline for that bag of pompoms, but instead she first wanted to make a wizard tower out of paper to place on her cardboard square. After she had spent her time colouring it in and making it look nice, she no longer could resist the pompoms and went ham, sticking as many on the cardboard as she could. At first we all thought she was gluing them to it just because she liked the colours and texture, but when we asked her what she was making, she responded “The rocks under the moat around the tower!”, catching all of us by surprise. She knew she wanted to use the material, and so she found a creative way to incorporate it into her piece rather than just including them for the sake of it. It also showed her understanding of the space she was creating, as she was thinking of the minute details and honing in on those too instead of just focusing on the big picture. It was so incredible to watch her creative thought process and developing sense of restraint, especially at such a young age.

– Naseem Anvari