We feel our village children do not get opportunities to handle art and
craft materials and get a chance to express themselves. Therefore this is an
important activity that we give a lot of emphasis to, as we believe this would
help children to gain self-confidence and help unfold their creativity. The
activities include:
Drawing and Painting
Having never handled colour pencils, brushes and paints, the children
enjoy the privilege of using these materials at Thulir. Once they were helped
to overcome initial fear of using colours and drawing, their imagination took
wings!!
The children use various materails like crayons, color pencils,sketch pens,
watercolours etc.on old newspapers, used envelopes, one side paper, chart
paper etc.
Claywork
With the visit by Patti from England, who was a keen clay worker, the clay
workshops took shape and we managed to even build a small rudimentary kiln to
fire the products. The children really enjoyed the experience and we hope to
make a better kiln and also reduce the breakages using better techniques.
One of the visitors to Thulir, Patti from England, helped get this activity
off the ground. Children really enjoy this activity. We also trid to build a
rudimentary small kiln and fired some of the claywork, with mixed reults!!
Paper folding
It is one of Thulir children's favourite activities. Dulari Gupta
introduced it to the children when she first visited us in Oct 04. When
children from Puvidham, an alternative school from Nagarkoodal, Dharmapuri
district and Indira from Poorna visited, there was further paper folding
sessions where there was much teaching and learning from each other. The
various caps are much made and used so much so that when local men came to
work on building the toilets for Thulir in the hot May sun, they asked our
children and got paper caps made to protect themselves from the sun while
working!!
Paper mask making / recycled paper making
When Anita Balalsubramaniam visited she taught us to make paper masks.
Later we also tried to make hand made card paper out of used paper by
recylying them. This became an interesting material to paint on!
Flower art
When there is a profusion of flowers especially of the Lantana bushes
along the roadsides, Thulir children like to bring them to do "pookolams"
[flower decorations] on the ground.
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