School’s out and that means summer programming is about to start at our Kansas City Learning Center. We have a lot of exciting workshops planned and maybe a few surprises throughout the summer. Check them out below!
June
The life skill of the month is “perseverance” and we’ve planned activities that demonstrate the ability to keep going, pushing through doubt and negativity, to reach a goal.
In one workshop, kids will create 3D nature art by picking out items like sticks, flowers, pebbles. They will then use what they found outside to create a picture or scene. Since they can only use what they’ve found outside, they will have to be creative to finish their work of art.
In another workshop, we will be creating blind contour drawings as a reminder that art is not about perfection but about pushing through. They will choose an object to draw, drawing it’s outline all while never looking down at their paper. Their drawings won’t be a perfect copy, but that’s not the point. Drawing what you see, and completing it teaches a much greater lesson.
We must have perseverance and above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.Marie Curie
July
July is all about R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Respect has many different facets, respect for others, respect for self, respect for community. Our goal in these workshops is to get HALO youth intentionally thinking about these life skills. Throughout July we will be doing projects that encourages them to define respect and identify what it looks like in their lives.
Eyes are sometimes referred to as a window to the soul. They can reveal a lot of emotion and looking someone in the eye can be a vulnerable experience. Being able to look into someone’s eyes and communicate on their level, whether they are an elderly person or a child, can be hard and uncomfortable but it is often one of the greatest and empathetic signs that you respect them and what they are saying. For this project the youth will all be given a scrap piece of wood or cut strips of hard construction paper and do a portrait of their eyes or a partner’s eyes. At the end we will put them together to make a collage.
Later on in the month, HALO youth will be creating Respect Mobiles to demonstrate what respect looks like to them in various ways. They will construct a hanging mobile with 4 images or objects that are symbols for respect for self, others, environment, and beliefs/cultures. This is a way to visualize what they respect and how respect crosses over into all areas of our lives.
