Peyton, Rainy, and Paige have been working over a year now to author and illustrate a children's book. They both came into EAST with amazing art abilities. At first, they were not sure how to connect this passion with a class like EAST. But once they figured out how to pair their passion and talents with a way to help others, they flourished. They have self taught themselves how to use an app on the iPad to co-illustrate and author a children’s book. They have used MediBang Paint and Adobe Illustrator to complete a story called Treated. The moral of the story is how to treat others how they want to be treated. All of the characters are based on different types of candy to play off the "treat" theme. They have had to restart several times and push past the frustrations of learning something new with no guidance from anyone. With being a new program, they were the first to try this out. They have taught themselves how to use these programs through trial and error and looking up tutorials. Their perseverance and grit have shined through this process.
Their team’s project has been highlighted at Conference at our booth last year and will be again this year. It is a story of growth in skills and confidence, of continuing to push their project to the next level, and of reaching out to the community. They read their book to the elementary students this winter once it was completed. It is their hope to have it self published by the end of the year in order to get it into the hands of all the K-2 students. They continue to look for ways to get their book to children for free, which is the intent of their project; they want their book to be available to low income families. They have looked into partnering with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and through Amazon, but have not been successful. Yet, they keep on researching and looking for other ways to accomplish this.
This January, they zoomed with Roberts Elementary to show a few of their students how to use MediBang Paint. It was a great opportunity for them to share their knowledge and experience with other students out there that want to do similar projects. They want to share what they have learned in order to help others. They have also used their digital art skills to create a green screen backdrop for the Christmas program at out elementary school. It was used for the photos with Santa. Rainy took the iPad home over Christmas break in order to get the completed. Other students in class have begun using MediBang as well and all three of the ladies have been a great resource to their classmates.