I was searching for an Art book for my school sessions and was very keen to read this picture book, Lucy’s Picture by Nicola Moon Illustrated by Alex Ayllife, as it is a book around craft and art. This book catches my eye. The book tells us the story of a girl who makes a collage for her blind grandfather using the things which he can feel.
I chose this story for my std 3 class since the children had told me that they want to explore craft work. I read the book and felt that this would be perfect. Though the illustrations were not that much eye catchy for me the theme was! The theme focused on emotions and feelings of a girl for her grandfather.
I feel It was the best medium to expose children to blindness, to teach them the ways to do modifications in the creative way to show their affection. When I told them about Lucy’s blind grandfather in the end of the story, children connected with Lucy’s collage and soon responded that because of visual impairment of her grandfather she used twigs, cloth, sand, her hair and other different materials so that he can touch and feel them. As earlier in this class I had read ‘ A Gift From the Sea ‘ by Melanie Kunz, illustrated by Srivi book which is also a kind of similar themed book, we had a lot to talk about.
At the end of the story, children started doing an activity with the things which we provided. We told the children to close their eyes and we told them to choose materials for their collage which was something new for them. Children were very excited and everyone was looking forward to choose best of best what they can get. As at some point it was a bit difficult to lower their voices because they were very excited to do the collage. Craft work cannot be done quietly when you have so many children doing it together. This activity really kept the children busy and also gave us a chance to experience what creativeness they have in them.
Where Lucy used her little imagination to make something very different , our children also came up with fantastic work. The children won’t have emotions like Lucy while making the collage but they were told to think of the person for whom they wanted to gift the collage. While doing the collage, they had that person’s thoughts in their mind which helped them to come up with more creative work effortlessly and they knew for whom they were making that collage which gave them different perspective to think differently.In this class we didn’t only did craft work but gave the children an opportunity to think in other ways about how to think differently. The session also focuses on how to see beyond the limitations and how affection and love overcomes everything.
It could have been better if we had the opportunity for the children to explore the environment outside the class and collect the things to use in their collage, however, we were limited by our classroom timings and setting. But never the less, the children used all the things which was provided and came up with beautiful work.
