Decisions decisions!

As some of you may remember (and for those of you that don't) before the summer holidays of 2014 my primary school - St Georges School, Windsor Castle - helped me raise some money with an art exhibition. The event was organised by my old 'house' - Vindictive, but all the children in the school took part. In their art classes, each pupil created a piece of artwork to do with the theme of 'Africa'. These were then framed by a company and were sold at an art exhibition. Thanks to the amazing generosity of all the parents that bought a painting or a print, the school raised £340. During the exhibition I also had a stall, talking to the children and the parents about my year away in Namibia, answering any questions they had, and explaining what the money raised would be going towards. I also sold the plastic bag bracelets my learners from Tses had made, and greeting cards printed with photographs that I took during my year away. My little stall (somehow!) managed to raise another £80, bringing the total to an incredible £420!!!

Over the summer I came across an amazing website called 'Baker Ross' that sells art supplies. They have products suitable for both individuals  and for schools so I decided that this was a really good website to order my supplies from. Especially since they had such a wide variety of products that were both so easy to use and really adorable.

So, below is the list of everything that I have ordered for the children at Tses! I wanted to help create a sort of starter kit for painting activities, since a lot of the supplies needed were very difficult to get our hands on whilst out in Namibia. This included:





Disposable Aprons













Acrylic Paint










Paint Pot Trays

Patterned Palm Printers









I also wanted to send some supplies to help with arts and crafts in general. For example,

Bumper Paper Classpack















Pattern Scissors Caddy











Black and White Self-Adhesive Wiggle-Eye Stack










Coloured Self-Adhesive Wiggle-Eye Stack











'Handmade By' Stickers








But of course I couldn't forget how much all of the learners loved colouring in - no matter how old they got! So I decided to order a range of products which hopefully future volunteers will somehow be able to incorporate into their lessons.

Pirate Colour-in Finger Puppets












Pirate Colour-in Masks

Circus Colour-in Finger Puppets

Christmas Colour-in Finger Puppets














Easter Colour-in Finger Puppets








Butterfly Colour-in Masks

Sealife Colour-in Masks

Rainforest Animal Colour-in Masks









Princess Colour-in Masks














Super Hero Colour-in Masks









Easter Colour-in Bookmarks













Holy Week Colour-in Bookmarks









I also decided to send over some nice little arts projects which I thought the learners might like to try. The classrooms in Tses often don't have very much decoration, and the children absolutely loved it when I displayed their work on the walls, so I tried to find art supplies which could incorporate both these things.

Patchwork Wall Hanging

Fabric Bunting

Bookworm Bunting

Large Upper Case Wooden Letters

Berol Fabric Crayons











And of course no order would be complete without including at least a few stickers for the children!




Motivational Rosette Stickers











Glitter Foam Self-Adhesive Letters

Jungle Animal Foam Stickers











Easter Sticker Pack










I also decided to include a product which didn't have anything to do with Arts

Teacher Thousand Place Value Arrows








I'm not sure if this sort of product will be very useful for the teachers in Tses so I thought I would do a little experiment and, if they like this kind of thing, then the next time I do a fundraiser I can send similar items out to them.

So there it is, the list of all the items which will soon be sent out to Tses. I had to try to choose supplies which would be reasonably easy to use out there (since they don't really have any art supplies) and something that the learners would understand and be enthusiastic about - which was never an easy task! Hopefully they'll like the supplies that I've chosen though! My next plan is to wait and see the reactions to the products that have been sent out, and then start another fundraising project to send out another load, with some modifications if there are certain things that work better than others :) So once again, a massive thank you to everyone who got involved, to the children who created all the beautiful works of art, to the parents who participated in the art exhibition or donated money, and, of course, everyone who managed to get to the end of this post!