Taking Crayons to the Pre-School

    Today I went to the Ecole Maternelle du Nord, just down the street, with materials I had brought from the states: several boxes of crayons, a package of colored construction paper and a roll of newsprint.

     We had pre arranged with the headmistress to give the children an art experience. Even though this school seemed to be pretty affluent by African standards, they did not have paper and crayons for any of the children. The posted daily schedule had some pretty tough stuff on it, though: science and technologie, enviroment, and this for 3 - 6 year olds.

There was one table with 10 chairs but there were about 30 children.  

So we spread large sheets of paper on the floor and passed out the crayons to all of them.

I asked them to draw their families.  They did,  but they also drew "voitures", even though most  families don't own cars,  but travel by foot, horse cart, taxi or bicycle.

Lina translates my French into Wolof for the children.  

The real hit during this session was the camera.  Next time I'll take the video camera and let them take videos of themselves.