Page 42 - MY Book - My Voice

The third workshop was conducted a year later. This time the children were accustomed to come to the center and participate in workshops, and they had adapted to the structure and the routines at the center. One of the problems, though, is the lack of space as too many children are coming at the same time. The atmosphere was hectic and crowded, but everybody did their best under the given circumstances. I wanted to do a workshop about face expressions. The children would learn how to draw a faces and to re ecton di erent emotions. If time and if suitable, we would also make speech bubbles to let the characters communicate.We gathered a group of children in a small room, usually the o ce for the speech therapist, who was not present at Fridays. We removed the o ce desk and placed plastic tables and chairs for 15 children.One of the children had a handicap, CP, and she was not able to walk on her own. I stacked two chairs on top of each other, next to me, so that she could sit in a position corresponding with the height of the table. Other children can stand up and be able to move more freely when drawing. I don’t know if she was able to speak, she didn’t say anything, but smiled a lot. Her sister was also joining the workshop, at the other end of the table.It is quite new and a positive development that children with disabilities are involved and integrated with the others. Still some parents hide their handicapped children, and there are few services especially for handicapped children in Lebanon.We started o with warming-up exercises preparing the children to draw faces. This we did by touching and measuring our own face. Then we drew what we found out. We used thick oil pastels on big- size papers. Laughter, wonder and comments about the drawings arose.Later we used reference photos, and using a thin black drawing-pen, drew detailed and concentrated studies of di erent people, old and young, men and woman. There was a moment of silence and concentration in the room as the children drew thin black lines, wrinkles, smiles, eyes and hats. Suddenly time was out, the lunch was soon being served, and while the last children nished their drawing, I started to hang drawings up on the wall. We nished the workshop looking at and talking about all the drawings together.40