21 Nov - Christmas Cards

We've tried very hard to foster creativity in the children at Kids' Castle, to get them to think for themselves and use their imagination. And to a certain extent we have achieved. They still all repeat 'Hands Down' at the end of prayers, but we've seen some lovely examples both in and out of the classroom of them using their initiative. Brilliant.

Today marks 3 days to go until we make our departure from Kids' Castle. Time to step up the ante and really deliver some fun and useful lessons to the children.

For class three, a lesson in culture, art, and learning to share. How? By making them make Christmas cards. Nothing that can't be achieved with a bit of glue, pairs of scissors, and some coloured paper and a few crayons.

Chaos. Utter bedlam. Sharing and manners are somewhat lacking in Indian children, and you can picture the scene as Sarah and I had to regain control of the marauding looters of the shiniest paper and hoarders of glue... The concept of using the paper sparingly and starting cutting from the edge rather than the middle of a sheet of A3 to make a 1" star had to be explained more than once, and the constant cries of "Miss, cut for me", or "Sir, draw me Christmas tree" were incessant. Seriously, hats off to primary school teachers. To take this sort of thing on more than once must require some sort of energy mortgage!

But make the cards they did, and some of the results were simply lovely. Others perhaps were more along the lines of 'creative'! Watch this space to see who gets one.

You'd think that one session might be enough, but in fact Sarah's going to have another go tomorrow, and this time we're going to introduce glitter...

Pictures:

Aditya and Prashanti write thank you letters. If only they always looked this studious and engaged!

Danish making cards: all signed on the back "Made of Danish"!

Ashit and Pradim doing lovely work.