I was grateful to deliver to St. Thomas the Apostle this year. It was a new site for me and it was fun to learn the area and be able to work with the school age group! The students were always beaming with excitement and I felt very welcomed every week. Many of the kids took some of the activities seriously and tried their utmost best to create beautiful pieces of work. With the help of the educators in the class, it was great to manage and have their attention as their educators would be invested into the activity as well. It helped set up an example and have students follow along.

For the first week, the students had a lot of fun finding textures. Their classroom was filled with many interesting objects with unique textures like a hanging pot and fabrics in the room. Seeing the kids find all these small niche objects throughout their space was really cool as they knew where to go for all their ideas for textures.

They also enjoyed the week of seeing where they got to draw things around the classroom. Their group was fixated on uno cards and many of them would try to find different logos and games to draw. One student enjoyed drawing their educator which really made them happy. It was nice seeing how they feel comfortable in their classroom drawing each other and their friend’s bags.

For the week of the map, they were really aware of their surroundings in the area and created their own map based on the Google Maps image. They were able to try to draw the routes around the school and the forest. Since the week was based on smell, one student tried to draw the sky full of smoke and the orange sun. It was interesting to see how they processed the sky state.

The time at St Thomas the Apostle was really enjoyable and being able to communicate with both the students and the educator each week was really helpful. They helped manage the classroom and would get the students involved and engaged. I enjoyed seeing the students each week excited to do an arts activity, and to see their progress over the programming.