   Children's Craft Afternoonsby Tharani BalachandranBesides beautiful, colorful flowers and various local fruit trees, the most striking and constant sight at the Adarsh Seuj Prakalpa garden project are the community children. Kaylin, Laura and I wanted to have a weekly project that would start them thinking creatively about the environment and stimulate their interest in sustainable agriculture. The children already spend many hours playing in the garden and enthusiastically helping out, so rounding them up every Saturday afternoon was not a problem. The first week we had a mask-making session, during which we provided a variety of beneficial insect and animal shapes to decorate, such as ladybugs, bees and frogs. As scissors, glitter, glue and crepe paper were frantically passed and tiny masked faces ran around the room, we explained how these insects and wildlife are important to our environment and why they need our protection. In keeping with this theme, week two was the launch of our calendar project. Each child randomly drew the name of an insect or animal from a hat, then worked on creating it on paper. A short while later we had a pile of artistic worms, spiders, butterflies…and something that looked like a blue and yellow ambulance. Projects for the near future include painting compost bins and preparing a children’s garden. Craft afternoons have been a lot of fun for the kids and for us!
Tharani Balachandran is a UBC graduate, currently pursuing studies in environmental law, who spent 10 weeks as a volunteer at the Adarsh Seuj Prakalpa project in early 2008. |