Vishnu and Sariswati

(Vishnu pictured here)

These four armed gods would serve as a really wonderful prompt for kids in a project that would challenge them to problem solve their way through a picture of someone doing many different things at once. Initiate a discussion with “when was the last time you did more than one thing at the same time?’ and ask children to show where/how their arms were positioned in the moments they describe. Tell them that Vishnu had four arms because he had so many important things to do (tell the stories of the various objects and their purpose), and Sariswati had four arms so she could hold all of her favorite things. Ask children to consider what they would do and/or hold onto if they had four arms.
Materials and project suggestions: Children can make paintings or drawings of someone with four arms doing many things at once, or holding on to four favorite things. It would look great if drawn on blue paper, cut out, and glued onto a different color background (or cut from white paper, and glued onto blue). Colorful details can be added to marker outlines with paint and detail brushes or oil pastels.

Gujarat Birdhouses

In the Jain faith it is believed that ancestors come back as birds and other animals, so to create elaborate bird houses for living birds is an important part of caring for your departed loved ones. Making bird houses, either functional, 3-dimensional, or paintings or drawings of imagined birdhouses, with this particular energy as a motivation—that you are providing for your loved ones--would be a beautiful project for all ages but especially good for pre-adolescents because they usually need projects to have some immediate importance and/or function. There’s a classic ‘design your dream house’ project for this age group, but the case of ‘design a bird house for your ancestors’ has the added benefit of not being so obviously self-interested and could be a good way for children of this age group to combine their own interests with some amount of compassion and care for others.

Materials and project suggestions: Pre-adolescents are generally quite content making elaborate drawings using pencils or permanent markers. Permanent markers are preferred because it discourages erasing, and challenges children to jump right in and deal with accidental marks or errant lines. This would be a beautiful project with younger children and a variety of paint or maker colors. A collage, using colored paper, hand-painted paper, newspaper, cardboard, etc. would look great and encourage children to think about ‘building’ the bird house, and if 3-dimensional projects are possible, it would be great for children to work with cardboard squares, paper towel rolls, toothpicks, and white glue.