19 December 2011

advent art, part 2

(continued from yesterday)

Another problem with my art idea was that I wanted the children to be surprised by the end result. This meant not being able to tell them very much about why they were doing this cutting and pasting, and why everything was supposed to be the same color. So they lost interest fairly quickly. In hindsight, this seems a fairly obvious flaw in my plan!

And the final problem was that I found I was too invested in how I wanted this project to turn out. It wasn't primarily about the process - the final product was also extremely important to me. So I was really unable to let the children work on it freely. In the end, I did most of the work on this project myself. I did have a little help from one of the children (and another adult) on Thanksgiving Day, and three other adults gave me a little help on a couple of Sundays. But the bulk of it was me.

By the second Sunday of Advent (our first Junior Church session in Advent), I was able to place this in the room:



When asked, I explained that it was Advent art. I tried to remind them of the work they'd put into it the previous month (I'm not sure any of them really made the connection), and explained that it would be finished gradually during Advent. I wondered what they thought it might be. One suggested a boat (you can see the prow of the boat there in brown). Another said it looked like it would be a castle. Another suspected that we'd eventually see a priest in the middle. 

More tomorrow...

2 comments:

  1. Sheila19 December, 2011 20:14

    Storyteller, I know this was probably a frustrating experience, but look how much you have already learned from it. Many people that do art with children are not able to evaluate it as well you have here. Way to go!

    ReplyDelete
  2. seethroughfaith20 December, 2011 16:11

    a good candidate for theological reflection

    why was "the final product ... extremely important to me" so much so that you were "really unable to let the children work on it freely"

    how would you have felt if a child had messed up your plan .. or indeed still does since the artwork is nolonger in your hands

    What was God saying to you as you worked and through the work .. what have you learnt about yourself and God through this process

    :D

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for conversing with me about Godly Play®! I do moderate some comments for the sake of the children I write about. Please be polite: to quote the Velveteen Rabbi, Whatever you're going to say in response to my posts, consider whether it's the sort of thing you would say to your host or their children if you'd been invited to someone's home for tea. If it isn't, then please don't say it here.

If you're new to commenting on blogs, I recommend that you "Comment as" Name/URL. You can use your real first name or a nickname. URL is the address of a website that you want to be linked with your name - feel free to leave it blank. Before your comment is accepted, you have to pass a spam filter. After clicking on 'post comment' or 'preview', just type in the sequence of letters you will then see (or click on the wheelchair for a recording of characters to type). Thanks for reading and commenting!

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)