source: www.youthwork-practice.com | 2000 Games, Devotions, Themes, Ideas and more for Youth Work
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Tinkering in the group meeting - Shadow Heads

Suggested program for March

A beautiful craft idea for kids is Shadows Heads. The preparation is quite simple and can be achieved during a children's or youth group meeting.

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It requires a strong lamp, a chair, (black) construction paper, pencil, scissors, thumbtacks and, of course, a child and its head.

The child sits on the chair, which is facing a wall. The lamp is positioned in a way so that the child’s shadow of his head is cast on the wall. Depending on the distance of the lamp, the shade, is larger or smaller. So you have to try and test different possibilities. A second child or the youth worker draws the outline of the head on the construction paper.

Then the child is required to cut carefully out its own outline. The construction paper can now be glued to Styrofoam and then cut out using a Styrofoam saw. Last but not least, using a picture hanger, the finished Shade Head can be mounted on the wall. Instead of a Styrofoam Shadow Head put it in a picture frame behind glass. This also looks very beautiful.

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It looks pretty funny when all the kid’s Shadow Heads are hung up. For the next parents meetings, you could even come up with an exhibition. Each parent has to guess the black profile picture of their child.

The Shadow Heads require some skill with the scissors, but are not too difficult for even smaller children. Kindergarten children already learn how to use scissors and paper, so that the fine motor skills of the child are practiced. Even the drawing of the shadow line on the construction paper should be no problem – except an adult will draw a little faster than a child. Since there are only 1-2 lamps available, it takes time until all outlines are drawn. As a rule of the thumb, the youth worker will do the drawing.

Shadow Heads are about 30cm tall. If you intend to make a collage, where you have all the Shadow Heads of the youth group together to exhibit in the centre, you have to reduce the size of the heads. You can to that either by hand or using a copier, which can reduce the original 1-2 times. Postcard seized Shadow Heads are just great for this purpose.

Food for thoughts and talks

Every person is just the way he is, how he has become. As he shows his profile, there are rough edges. There are characteristic features, yet we do not see into another person. However, we do judge him, the way we see him. Relationships build when we want to get to know someone if we are interested in whom he is.

In this context keywords could be:

profiles,
types of people,
personality traits (good/bad),
getting to know each other,
interest,
relationships,
assessments (judgments, condemnation, appreciation),
external and internal image,
visible and invisible (reactions, feelings), ...