Dream Creative Arts
Monday, 16 August 2010
Annaswamy School
Facilitator: Namrata Rajesh
Class 6, 22 Children
Activity: Independence Day Painting
Every once in a while, children strengthen our belief that complete education goes beyond the academics and children have tremendous potential irrespective of the circumstances they come from. At a recent Creative Arts session, children proved once again that life skills are critical and help in completing the cycle of education.
Focus of the activity:
- To see if the children understand the given instructions well
- To see if the children use previously taught techniques on their own
- To discuss the National Flag: What the colours on the flag represent? What the blue wheel in the center of the flag represents?
The children were given pencil colours and wax crayons and black lead pencils and asked to draw something which exhibited the spirit of Independence Day. The children were mainly asked to use the colours from the Tricolour and use their own creative imagination to come up with something and not draw the flag as a whole.
13 out of 22 painted the typical flag hoisting scene. The remaining 9 children understood and executed the activity brilliantly! These 9 children did not copy from any other source and used their creative imagination.
Some examples of what the children came up with included:
Dinesh: Drew a picturesque landscape with orange sun, orange mountains, white river, blue fish, green pastures and other beautiful birds, etc. It was excellent even in terms of a composition!
Pavithra K: Drew floral designs in a vase. Again she did not copy. And for an original floral design, it was simply too good!
Bhavya: Drew two coconut trees and a huge tortoise in the middle of it. The girl seems to love green as the entire paper looked green and she had used very little orange. Well, choice of colours is a personal one, the good thing is she did something very original and had fun with it.
Vinodhini E: Drew a simple house and coloured its roof with alternate orange, white and green stripes adorned by blue trees! The girl drew blue trees!! Never witnessed anything more original than that!!
Zahir Hussain: The usually noisy attention seeker was quiet in the class for a surprising change and did a marvellous job with the activity! Marvellous! Really! He was the only one who coloured the entire paper without sparing any blank space (The children were made to colour the entire paper in the Resist effect activity). His painting was the most bold and on the borderline of abstraction. He divided the paper into two, one half orange and the other half green. And drew various other things on and around it in white and blue and also orange and green.
Reflections:
The facilitators discussed the names and meanings of the colours on the flag. The children were taught and explained new words like the tricolour, unity in diversity, peace, prosperity. The children were asked to write down these words in their homework books so that they do not forget it.
The children sang two lines from “Jhanda ooncha rahehe humara” (Let our flag fly high) before winding up the class.
“The children were asked to draw something which exhibited the spirit of Independence Day. Paintings were original to the core. The choice of colours was personal but simply it was too good! It was excellent even in terms of a composition!” ~ NAMRATA NADKARNI, Creative Art Facilitator





