Harrington Harbour: July 2011

By Elizabeth Waters

Today we made our nature journals. Chessye, Olivia, and I had already made ours to test out the best way to do it. We had punched enough paper to make ten and cut all the canvas to the right size. At nine we met with the kids on the platform. Many of them had swim lessons in the morning so they rotated in and out. Luckily the journals took only a few minutes to assemble.

The journals consisted of ten pages of 8.5 by 11 printer paper folded horizontally in half. These were then inserted into a slightly larger piece of canvas. The idea was to have the kids paint the cover of the journals and decorate them however they wanted to.

We had the kids feed the string through the holes for the binding. Some of them came up with the idea of stringing beads onto the ends of the binding—so everyone started doing that and they came out pretty cool.

After lunch the three of us, along with Bianca and Cody (two teens from Harrington who watch the kids three days per week all summer) went to the local store to pick up some supplies for painting. We got plastic plates to use as paint palettes, thick paper towels, and water cups. Once back with the kids we all went into the school gym and set up tables. Each pair of kids shared a palette with the colors of the acrylic paints I brought.

Everyone finished painting their journals, helped clean up, and then went outside to play some games. It was really fun to see how each child decided to decorate their journal. They came up with so many different ideas. Today I felt like we really started getting to know each kid. We all had a lot of fun. Over the next week or so we’re going to keep using these journals to draw and write in. The kids (especially Emily) are very excited about it.