For our week three project we focused on the sense of seeing. The children were given cardboard frames with transparent acetate to draw on, using the frame to find something they wanted to capture and then tracing it onto the acetate.

The children at Dr. J. E. Davey loved this activity, many of them did multiple drawings and wanted to keep making them until the session was over! Two of the children in the group wanted to draw themselves, but since they couldn’t look at themselves through the frame they had to find another way to do self-portraits. The two children swapped their frames, and carefully traced each other’s faces through the frames to create portraits. They then swapped their drawings, and added hair and bodies to the drawings of themselves since they wanted to customize them in their own way. They also coloured their own portraits and decorated them, and the frames around it. Afterwards, they hung them up on a little fort that had been built in the classroom. It was so awesome to see them help each other with the part that they couldn’t do themselves, and then express themselves through the colouring and decoration of their own portraits, making beautiful collaborative pieces!

This moment was so lovely, it showed their problem-solving abilities in such a wonderful way. Their improvisation made the activity even more special as a collaborative project where they were able to express themselves through their art!