Part of our purpose for being here in Italy is to create art that points to Christ and there was a lot of that going on this summer at our first annual Arts & English camp!

After weeks of planning that Jon and Eunice (Co-Coordinators of the local arts NV Arts ministry) did to intentionally structure each day, days of printing and other prep to ready the materials, all backed by years of praying; we were thrilled to host a full week of art and English activities that invited kids and their families to engage with their Creator. And we invite you to enjoy getting a glimpse of it all in the brief daily descriptions below and the fun pictures Erika enjoyed taking to document our artistic adventures together throughout the week!

Day 1

Our first day of camp was a great kickoff for the week with everything from an introduction to the Creator – who made everything out of nothing starting with the creation of light – to an art lesson about primary colors, a science lesson about why we see color, and plenty of projects and games between to illustrate (pun intended) the concepts! We were grateful for the kiddos who would be with us for the week and that we could trust God to work as only He can in their hearts. Many of the kids were from the church but there was also one little girl from Arianna’s class at school!

Day 2

The second day was arguably even more fun than the first! The kids learned about how God created the land, sea and sky. They constructed “mountains” with spaghetti and marshmallows, made marbled paper using “water” and nail polish, and began large mixed media canvas paintings depicting the sky, sea and land (which we will add more to each day) all the while adding to their English vocabulary and coloring in more of their booklets.

Day 3

The kids learned about how God created the sun, moon and stars and the staff even got all done up for the morning Bible story enactment. Some of the other highlights were the paint-filled balloon-popping dart game, bubble painting, and adding the sun, stars and moon to our big painting of the sky!

Day 4

A day full of charades and pictionary as we marveled in Gods creation of animals on the land 🐅🐫🦒🐘🐖🦍🦖🐇 and in the sea 🦑🐬🐟🐳🦈! The kids created animals out of fingerprints, assembled 3-D creatures and played games to practice English.

Day 5

The last day of Arts & English camp was a celebration of the uniqueness of Gods creation of man and woman 👫. God spoke all the other creatures into existence but he formed man from the dust of earth and breathed life into him!  Each child got to make his or her own painting on canvas of a figure representing them and using complimentary colors they learned about on their color wheel. They also finished up the large collaborative paintings by making animals using their unique handprints.🖐And we ended with a little presentation of certificates and small gifts and art projects for the kids to take home.

By the end of the week we had ten kids at camp and they all had a blast. We also had a wonderful group of staff from our local church. 👏 It was a joy working with them!

You’ve seen snapshots of our week, but if you want more here is a video that one of the camp staff created with highlights from the week! It pieces together bits of the Bible lessons about the seven days of creation that were usually dramatized in some way by our volunteer staff and shows some other candid and fun moments caught on video too. Enjoy!

As you can see, it was a great week of ministry and we are so grateful for the opportunity we had to be part of what God is doing here to engage hearts through the arts! We’ve already got lots of ideas and kids who are excited to participate and bring their friends to another Arts & English Camp next year!