PS 18: The Magic Wall

At PS 18, we came together with the absolute best kids ever to create the school’s second mural ever with us as partners. This season we were tasked with creating a mural based on the theme of Wellness/Emotions and Feelings.

First, we held sessions with the kids in which we described what certain feelings are and feel like. We showed them different emojis and asked them to align the emojis with different feelings; we also presented them with a scale from 1-10 and asked them to visualize a specific emotion at each interval. The feelings we used and based our mural on were joy, fear, disgust, sadness and anger. The kids did a wonderful job! They loved the 1-10 scale so much that we decided to add emotion scales to the mural, since they can perfectly represent how you feel on a given day. You can go to the peak of happiness and the bottom of anger.

Our first painting day together was during a community paint day on a Saturday so school wasn’t in session, but the amount of kids who wanted to paint and be involved in something spectacular was HUGE. More than 10 families showed up and worked together with us to start our wellness mural, and it was a great start for the season. Many of the kids, especially the 1st and 2nd graders, really loved painting the animals and the river. One time, I went to check if everything was okay and if any materials were needed, and I saw one of the kids just smiling from beginning to end when she was up there, and it warmed my heart a lot.

Vanesa and I are incredibly grateful to Loreto, Sydney and Kenneth for coming out to help and using their amazing skills to help us in the final stretch; we got it done in time for the Ribbon Cutting. The principal of P.S. 18 Mr. Lee was so thrilled during the ceremony about how it turned out. Mr. Lee thanked Thrive for another wonderful art piece and is looking forward to another piece in the future.