Asia Week - Namaste! We're in India!

It's the second day of Camp Imaginators and we're wasting no time on our whirlwind adventure! To start the morning off the older Imaginators elected a representative to write in the countries China and India on the map mural :) 

Then it was on with our regular schedule! After all we have big plans to go around the world in just 20 days! Our focus today... the magical nation of India. To set the mood for my older Imaginators, we took a look at a little video on some fun facts about the country. 

This helped to frame our discussion and believe me they didn't need much after that... we talked about where India is on the world map, what the weather is like there and of course most could talk about what religions are practiced there and what the people ate and how they dress! 

Then came our introduction of the art project for the day. I explained to the Imaginators that when we travel most people (myself included) love to bring something back to remember their trip and this is how I told them that they should think of everything we make at camp :) As little trinkets that represent the places we talked about and the time we spent exploring that country. 

For our India project the campers are all making hand shaped ornamental dishes that are going to be decorated using Mehndi patterns! So of course we also talked about what Mehndi is and most of my campers were very familiar with the practice and excited to get to make one for themselves! 

Parents, I was excited about this project because not only is it beautiful, but it is also a great way of freezing a moment in time. They will never be this size again but we've captured it and now you have a lovely souvenir made all the more special because it also documents your child's growth! 

This project needed drying time so they actually made their hand moulds yesterday, so today we got straight down to painting them and taking time to drawing on the intricate mehndhi designs. You could hear a pin drop as the older ones painted their patterns... my youngest kiddos well, not so much! lol. They are doing this project in stages because as you would imagine it is difficult to get some 4 to 6 year olds to use paint sparingly... and the hands need to be dry before patterns are applied. But that's why we have Wacky Wednesday and Fix it Friday folks! Take a look at what they've done so far. 

Check out the stories they were read over at The Reading Garden!