Challenge Day

So, today was the advanced challenge day as far as working goes. We had two great groups today that presented more challenging opportunities. Our first group was severely cognitively impaired and required intense individual attention. All of the members are so creative and ambitious though! I find that these children seem to do the most expressive and unfiltered work. Fortunately for us, these children all understood and spoke english, so the communication, although limited, was fluid. We started the session by doing the butterflies with tissue paper. Unlike the previous day's work that utilized tissue paper in many different ways, this group was fairly limited, although one girl used the tissue paper to trace around the butterfly and another rolled bits into balls and glued them to the edges. This group also didn't seem to be terribly influenced by what one another was doing. The only repetition i saw was two girls who both did dots in the middle of their butterflies. After the completion of the butterflies, we helped them cut out the shapes. I found that the boy with high functioning downes syndrome (I am avoiding using names, not to de-humanize him) had the most difficulty cutting along the lines, but another girl who was very slow (and whom her peers thought needed most help) seemed to be able to cut along the lines with relative ease. After this, the children were given watercolor paper and watercolors and were asked to paint anything. The same boy mentioned before did the most expressive and creative piece I saw, and went about it with seemingly no trepidation.

After this first group, we felt pretty good. The children enjoyed themselves and were able to share their artwork and art making experience with each other and us. The next group presented a totally new challenge to us. Although we have had mainly Afrikaans speaking groups before, we have never had an entire group that does not speak or understand english. Never say never. In this group, one girl understood and spoke limited english, but was not at the cognitive level to translate our requests to the others. She was sweet and helpful as much as she could be, but we cannot expect or rely on a student to play translator. We tried to introduce the concept of filling in the butterfly with drawings or coloring by using hand signals. After we handed out the materials, mild panic came over as they all sat, silently, doing nothing. I then decided to work on one as well and started coloring. They took this as a cue to start and dove into it. Most of these kids influenced each other as about four of them ended up coloring their butterflies as one solid color. I think this is because they were uncomfortable with the situation and did not understand the task - after all, how stressful must it be to have a teacher (or therapist) that only speaks another language? After they finished their butterflies, we gave them painting materials - this was where they opened up. Through gestures and demonstration/modeling, we were able to teach them how to use the watercolor paints and they proceeded in making relatively expressive works. The whole session felt awkward and Paul and I seemed to have mutual sentiments about the comfort level being off. If we see this group again, we will have to discuss how to go about working with them. I will try and attach a picture or two to this, if my internet allows.


So after work, we all went to Bo-Kaap - an area of Cape Town settled by the Cape Malays, those from SE Asia and the islands who were enslaved by the Dutch East India Co. This area is very colorful as all the houses are painted bright colors. It's also very pricey $$$. We had Malay food, which was pretty spicy (i couldnt eat much) but seemed to be good. After exploring Bo-Kaap and taking copious amounts of photos, we went to the Slave Lodge, a museum devoted to the history of the slaves from the Dutch East India Co. up to the Apartheid and present day. It was pretty fascinating.

Here go some photos:
View from Bo-Kaap
ikuko and yesenia

-k