SESSION 4
Starting from the story of “Nello & Patrasche – A dog in Flanders”, we discovered the Belgian comicbooks’ world!
The engaging plots, the colourful drawings, the strange characters, the superheroes and the funny speech and thought bubbles are appealing elements not only for children but also for adults.
A valuable example of that it’s “Nello & Patrasche” story, which has become a real tradition both in Japan, the original country of this comic, and in Belgium, the country in which the comic is set. According to it, in Antwerp, a big statue of the two protagonists of the story (Nello & Patrasche) and their graves have been built in the square in front of the cathedral of the city, where the story takes place: nowdays, lots of Japanese people want to visit Antwerp just to admire these peculiar monuments!
Being inspired by the main characteristics of the Belgian comicbooks, we tried to become cartoonists creating our first comic!
As you can see in the photos above, we followed an efficient didactical method, based on team-working, sharing and creativity. Split in groups, we received a blank sheet. At the beginning, we were asked to create six comic windows and to draw different kinds of landscapes (mountains, seaside, rural environments, etc.) only in three of those windows. After that, we shifted our sheet to the group on our right side, while we were receiving another sheet from the group of our left side. This changing among groups was used for all the following steps, which were adding speech and thought bubbles, drawing the shape of a superhero and writing down all the sentences and dialogues.
Eventually, each group managed to contribute to the creation of all the comics!
I consider this practice very active, funny, engaging and educational for children in preschool and in primary school. Through it, they can develop both their creativity and their social skills, such as co-operating, sharing, team-working and negotiating, in a playful and positive context, in which they learn while they have fun!