Creative Expression - Art Day at CEF ~ Guest blog by Ms Ngoc

Linda DeWolf from Go Philanthropic explaining the color wheel

One of the mandalas in progress

 CEF's annual ‘Creative Expression’ or 'Art Day', (Art Day is the name we usually call this event with the families) happens with the help of Linda Kay, an artist from the States who also is from Go Philanthropic, our US partner organization. For CEF, it is amazing to see the children spend time together in order to create, draw, make cards or boxes and learn more about art.

The CEF children who are local and live near Hoi An were asked to join in on the Art day and they were really interested to take part on this creative day. Some of them came very early and drew or colored in pictures while they were waiting for the others.

Another mandala in progress

 On this Art Day, the children were able to make boxes with a choice of 4 different shapes and then decorate them with a large choice of materials (glitter, ink stamps with many cute images, crayons, wet coloring pencils, some pretty patterned paper and ribbons) to help them design and create. Then after that they colored in beautiful mandalas. It surprised us that the children concentrated so much on these activities of making boxes and coloring in. They each wanted to make the most gorgeous ones in order to present them to their mothers and friends because it was near International Women’s Day.

After 2 hours of activities, we decided on the two most marvelous boxes and colored mandalas and gave them small prizes. We also gave small gifts of art materials to each student to encourage their creativity and show our respect for their hard work during the session.

Kim Chi explaining  how to make small decorative gift boxes

One of the boxes being decorated

One of the boxes being decorated

 Among the children, there is a girl dreaming of being an artist in the future. She loves art and from my perspective she certainly has the potential to be an artist because her art work is always well thought through, with meaning, as well as being very pretty.

I think all the children really love these activities as they said they wished to join it next year at CEF.

Below are some of the decorated gift boxes that were made