Advent mandalas

Advent Mandala time! 

We have a friend (and colleague) in Uganda who has her masters in community art.  One of her interests is in helping others process non-verbally-- and one of the exercises she has done with staff and students is based on mandalas.  For fear that my dad might think we're becoming buddhist, I'll emphasize the relevant piece of mandalas--the universal connection we all have to the circle shape, aesthtetically, spiritually, personally, etc. 

So, yesterday, while Mark was gone with students at debrief, and I wasn't quite sure what Sunday school might mean for our motley crew, I decided that we'd do something arty related to Advent.  I told the kids that the third Sunday of Advent was the "happy" one, Rejoice, rejoice, emmanuel has come to us oh, Israel!"  And so I asked them what visual things they thought were "happy" and joyful.  

I should qualify, that before I really described it to the kids, Daniel had made his "cubs" picture.  And I was laughing because I do think the Cubs tire cover/with Cubs logo is permanently etched in Daniel's mind in with a sort of mandala-like spirituality. :)  And it should be no surprise that Mary identified flowers and glitter as being the symbols of joy and new life.  So, that had to come into her collection of circles.  

Two funny art moments sort of developed as we were working away.  One moment was when Daniel was encouraging Rachel.  "Wow, Rachel, I can see your work is 'bold'" (Look to top picture to see which one might be Rachel's--remember, she's two). He then proceeded to turn to me and say, "what does bold mean?" And another moment was when Mary was sort of mopey because one of her circles wasn't right.  At first I was correcting her, "we're just enjoying the process, etc".  And then I told her that I used to rumple up my drawings when I was unhappy.  She and the other kids got a real chuckle out of that; hmm, maybe laughter is sometimes a better medicine than moralizing.