First Friday Fun in March

Everyone was well enough to attend this month, including some new faces! So exciting to see our circle of friends growing :)!

The monthly themes of Death and Resurrection and Creativity flip between the months of March and April depending on when Easter lands. So while the adults are looking at various Easter-like stories and traditions this month, we had the kids dive into the “caves of their imaginations” inspired by a quote from our founder, Bill Boast: “All creativity begins in the dark.”

We talked about how humans have the ability to close their eyes and create images in the darkness of their own minds. Then we looked at some of the early forms of creativity that were documented and made in very dark places — caves! We read a book titled The First Drawing, by Mordicai Gerstein, who imagines it was a young child who made the first drawings on cave walls. He could “see” animals in clouds and in bushes and had to communicate what he was seeing to others!

Each child then was invited to make their own “cave wall” by crumbling up brown paper and using the creases and rips to make animals or various shapes, just as the cave artists used the bumps and coloring of the cave walls thousands of years ago. We dimmed the lights and let them draw whatever they saw or were inspired to create. We had some stencils of the animals from the famous Lascaux cave for them to augment their cave art. And they all put their signature on it by way of their hand prints, just like those those that have been found in ancient caves around the world.

Finally, we turned off all the lights and each kid took a turn highlighting their artwork by way of flashlight, bringing the drawings to life with the “flicker” of the modern torch. Another Fun Friday for sure!