In 3 of our sessions, we were able to get a person come in and raise awareness about therapeutic art and how it positively impacts our health and well-being. We did several sessions like painting rocks, drawing and spray-painting and learned about different styles of therapeutic art.

I think this was really interesting to learn about since recently there has been an increase of mental disorders and the knowledge we learnt about therapeutic art can be applicable towards this issue. Particularly, since the rise of mental disorders i.e. depression, anxiety, insomnia is more frequent in younger generations and is on the pathway to becoming more accepted. (LO6, global issue)

During each session, whilst eating lunch we planned what we would be doing for the current week and tried to make every session diverse and different. For example, one week we would have to draw an idea related to a specific theme, the next week we would do rock-painting or learn about therapeutic art. We also brushed up our knowledge on several art techniques and styles like spray-painting, charcoal and watercolour painting. (LO3, planning)

The service I chose for CAS is Interactive Storytelling with PPIS. The reason why I chose PPIS is because it is the service I have done in Grade 9 and 10 so it is familiar to me. Something I am looking forward to in PPIS is interacting with the little kids and seeing in the future how we have helped them to gain more confidence and teach them about different cultures as many of them aren’t that confident and grow up in the same environment. For my service reflections I will mostly try and update my reflections on Thursday after the service session. (LO3, planning)

In the first week of service all we did is icebreakers and introduce ourselves to each other. We also discussed the challenges we would be facing as because of the pandemic we would not be allowed to meet the children this year and how we could overcome that. I think this would especially be more challenging to us as it will be harder to engage with the children therefore we would need to effectively plan our sessions and online meets as well as come up with different ideas to make it fun and interesting. (LO2, challenges)

This year the creative activity I signed up for CAS is pottery after school on Monday. The reason why I signed up for this particular activity was because the last time I did pottery was back in middle school and I remember enjoying it a lot.

Some aspects of CAS I am looking forward to is meeting new people and learning new skills. I am really interested in seeing how my art skills and creativity will develop over the course of time I do pottery as well as reflect on how creating pottery might have helped me with school. Another thing I am looking forward to is meeting new people as due to the covid situation, in classes and in break it is harder to socialize with new people. Pottery gives me a chance to meet people that are not in my grade and interact with students that are new to the community.

How I will plan my CAS reflections is by effectively setting up a schedule so that I have time to write my reflections and thoughts. On Fridays I will update my CAS reflections and if I cannot manage to post it on Friday then I will post on Sunday or Monday depending on how busy I am. (LO3, planning)

I finished making a flower pot for my mom so in the upcoming session I will paint it a blue colour as that is one of her favourite colours.

I think if I were to identify my strengths and weaknesses so far for pottery making, some of my strengths would be that it’s easy for me to make an object out of clay as I am familiar with the tools. In middle school we did do a unit in clay making for Grade 7 and 8 so I distinctly remember some of the techniques my teacher taught me. My weakness or area of improvement would be that I’m finding it difficult to focus on pottery and get started on making/finishing my product. I found that I would procrastinate a lot in the first ten minutes and then finally continue from where I left on. (LO1, strengths and weaknesses)