Teaching Papercutting at Camp Newman, 2012 (Part 2)

The second project we worked on at Camp Newman this summer was "paper midrash" — the campers were to use their new papercutting skills to tell a story from our tradition.

I worked individually with each camper to find a story to which they felt a connection; related to their Hebrew name, or from their bar mitzvah portion, or just something personally meaningful. And then they got to work! All of the campers in the yetzirah group were able to complete a paper midrash piece. Since we had much less time, not everyone in the hizdamnut group was able to complete another piece.

The yetzirah group had one more project as well... coming up in part 3. For now, here are photos of the campers' paper midrash projects. (I supplied the titles based on the subject matter.)

The Spies

The Four Species

The Rose

To Grow

Day and Night

David and the Spider

The Rescue

In the Garden

I had one camper in Hagigah this summer who made a butterfly papercut, based on a design in a book of Chinese folk papercuts. She mounted the cut-out butterfly on a sheet of lavender paper, and called it done. Then her friend took the paper she'd cut the butterfly out of, and put some colored papers behind it — resulting in matching papercuts, one positive and one negative.