Friday, March 30, 2012

Protect Our Trees.. Painting a Way to Conservation

Nkiloriti Primary Class One got their work off to a great start for the September art exhibition  ‘What Conservation Means to Me’ at Nanyuki's  Lily Pond Arts Centre.

 
After two initial lessons on ‘Conservation’ and some drawing work they chose to work on Trees  . The reasons given for the importance of trees in their initial drawings ranged from ‘We need trees to live’....'guests come to see trees and animals not cars’ to 'the wild animals need trees’.
So on ‘Painting and Creating’ Day it should not have been surprising, but was nevertheless inspiring, to have the 6-9 year olds rattling off their 8 most important reasons for protecting trees with no input from the teacher:
  • Trees protect our grassland
  • Trees bring rain
  • Trees give shelter
  • Trees give firewood
  • Trees give fruit for us to eat
  • Trees give us herbal remedies
  • Trees give leaves and fruit for our animals
  • Trees help us with fencing and house-building
Much hand-painting resulted in trees taking root  around the classroom and much cutting, sticking and drawing resulted in a great montage for the art exhibition: the first finished product...(Well, almost...)
Each of the Kenyan schools will choose a different focus and a variety of media for the exhibition: conservation of elephants being an important theme for some with Africa’s huge rise in poaching . Conservation of water, grassland, wild animals, rivers, and  Maasai and Samburu culture being other areas.
Our friends in Ireland and England are also preparing to join us in this display see  Becomeafriend.net  and we aim to create an exciting juxtaposition of European and African ideas of conservation. Watch this space as we paint/make/create  our conservation ideas...

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