Long activities day 1

This week we began our long group activities. The three groups topics were arts and crafts, challenge activities, and music activities. My Favorite activity was done by the arts and crafts group and was called book altering. I am not usually the kind of person that is big on doing artsy activities but i really enjoyed this activity. This activity is very good for any population because it is what ever you make it.

To begin the activity we were told to pick out any book we wanted from a cart of old books. I originally grabbed a book of historical French poetry, but once was told what we were doing i decided to choose a book written in English so i could actually read the words. :) We were then told to rip out some of the pages to make room for our alterations. I really enjoyed just being able to rip apart some of the book because this is something that you usually can't do. (Note: while doing this part with younger or at-risk populations to make sure that the book is no completely torn apart and there is still some remaining book parts remaining to create with.)

The first station was black out poetry where you use a marker to black out certain words on the page to make new sentences into a poem (this is why i changes books, I'm not too good at french). Another station was bubble painting where you mix paint and water to thin it out then blow bubbles of paint onto your pages. You could also do regular painting, coloring, decorating with magazine clippings, and everybody's favorite paper mache. The last station was the one that I considered the most creative, window making. This activity created a picture frame within your book by cutting out a block of pages making a hole in the book. you could then decorate the first page of your frame and place a picture with in the frame or store a significant personal item in the hole.

I could see using this activity with pretty much any population over the age of 6. Since there are no guidelines for what your book needs to look like, you can use this with all cognitive and physical abilities. The major precaution to be aware of is the safe use of supplies and any sensitivities that a participants may have to paints, glues and other supplies.

I love that this activity allows it to be personalized and allow the participant to express themselves. By simply using different colors or magazines can allow you to tailor the activities to different ages or genders by using sports, teen, nature, etc. to fit everyone. This can also be a great activity to open up discussion about the participants feelings or what they are making represents. I would really find this activity useful to working with kids and teens going through medial treatments or pain therapy.