Makin' Books

We went to the children's home again last night. After last week we found out we won't be able to work with the older kids because they leave for a month to go to their villages starting in March. To explain that a little better, these kids who are called orphans are often really from families that are too poor to support an other child. The family figure that the children will be better fed, have better medical care and schooling and have a better chance of getting a job that makes enough to send money home when they are older. Because this happens so often some children's homes have started to encouraging children to go back to their villages, which we think is a really good thing. So we found out about this last week though, so we are disappointed that we won't get to work with the kids (we spent a while getting ourselves excited about the projects we were going to do with them), but glad that the older ones have this kind of opportunity to go back to their villages.

Anyway, the little kids are great. They were all over us the minute we came in, giving us hugs and climbing all over me in particular. They range in age from 2 up to about 9. Over the next couple weeks we're going to be making books with them that contain pictures they've drawn of their favorite things (food, plants, animals, places, etc.) and a picture of them. If I get it approved by the home, I'll post a couple of them. I'm not sure the gist of our ideas and directions will completely get through the language barrier, but we're hoping some of it will... at least the kids seemed to enjoy it last night. By the way, if you ever need help with ideas for kids art projects, ask Joyce Miller, she will give you lots of really great help with ideas.

Here is a picture of one of the littlest kids drawing: