An experience to use art materials is also limited for children in rural areas. So we prepared big drawing papers and color pens for each small group of children, and let them draw a picture of the story they listened to.
But it seemed difficult for them to draw things from imagination. Certainly, we can’t draw anything we’ve never seen. By and large we simply think it’s better to draw by him/herself while avoiding just copying someone else or copying book illustrations; however, the amount of information that these children daily get from any media or books are significantly small compared to those of higher quality of life. Anyway many of them actually surprised us by copying illustrations from the book quite well.
Another 2 points we noticed about Cambodian children’s drawings are that they usually draw only with lines and not so much put colors in their drawings, and that they often use a ruler in their drawings. Very curious.
In the end, every group made a presentation to all in the class, showing their drawings and talking about the story. We read different stories for each group, so it was good for children to share each other what their story was about and how it was interesting. Our purpose was to introduce the fun of books among them. Anyhow children were mainly presented some teachings of the book -what they learned from the story- seemingly they are customarily taught to do so after reading a book.
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