Winter Greeting Cards (2)

Children in Kratie are of a wide age range, so we varied the types of Christmas tree crafts depending on the grade level.  Depending on the children’s grade, 1 or 2 types of trees were made to decorate a card.  We introduced 4 different types of Christmas trees: one made by folding circular colored paper into the shape of a tree, one made by pasting colored paper together to create a three-dimensional tree, a collage, and one made by pasting ribbons in a zigzag pattern to create a tree shape.  We wanted to convey that there are many different ways to express the same thing.

We thought that the tree made by the primary students would be the easiest, as they just cut colored paper into a circle and fold it, but there were some difficulties and discoveries.  Sometimes the paper ended up more like square instead of round, or deep cuts in the circle, depending on how paper were cut.

However, children of all grades showed behaviors that went beyond what we had introduced.  For example, even though the tree was supposed to be made with colored paper in 2 colors, they shared their given paper with friends and made it in 3 colors.  Or in another case, they cut out the patterned parts of origami and used them to decorate their cards in new ways, or used leftover colored paper to make tree trunks, stars, and other parts, each creating an original card.  They come up with ideas like these while they're making it.  That's amazing.

Last winter, many of the children drew Cambodian landscapes, but this year almost all of the children, from the younger grades onwards, drew Christmas pictures such as snowmen, trees with presents, and reindeer.  They can't draw things they don't know or have never seen before, so both last year and this year we showed them several cards with illustrations of winter scenes from foreign countries.  This year, more children were interested in drawing new things like this.

Through these, I can't help but think that accumulating experience is important.