The Chinese Lunar New Year holiday has just ended, and the lively Lantern Festival was right behind it. Yilan Tatong Parent-Child Center held a Lantern Festival event at the Lumbi Library on 3rd, Feb., calling on 15 local volunteers to accompany 15 families to experience lanterns DIY and Zentangle, linking the festival with life, integrating aesthetic education into the living environment, and allowing children to feel the joyful atmosphere of the Lantern Festival. In order to give the parents a breathing space, the volunteers accompanied the children to make lanterns, while the parents were led by the volunteer instructors to meditate on the Zentangle, which heals the mind and hopes that the parents will have more motivation to accompany their children to grow up healthy and happy.
Photo: Yilan Parent-Child Center held a Lantern Festival event at the Lumbi Library on 3rd, Feb., calling for volunteers to accompany children and parents to experience lanterns DIY and Zentangle.
The Supervisor of Yilan Tatong Parent-Child Center, Ms. Mei-Feng Hua said that most of the people in Tatung Township are farmers and their children are taken care of by their seniors or neighbors. The Chinese Lunar New Year holiday lasts for 10 days, so children and parents spend more time together at home, but they find that parents do not know how to interact with their children. To enhance the parenting function, Tatong Parent-Child Center invited children and parents to experience DIY activity on the eve of the Lantern Festival. The children were accompanied by volunteers to make the lanterns, training fine hand movements and hand-eye coordination. During the process of making the lanterns, there was a lot of laughter and the children were happy to write down their New Year wishes. On the other hand, the parents were arranged to forget their stress by drawing lines and completing the Zentangle with their brushes. After the artwork was completed, children and parents shared their experience in making the artwork to increase parent-child interaction.
Photo: Yilan Parent-Child Center calls on local volunteers to accompany children to experience lanterns DIY and let them feel the joyful atmosphere of the Lantern Festival.
In order to increase the diversity of experience and enhance the integration of aboriginal cultures, the Zentangle course was specially arranged to integrate with the aboriginal totems, and invited Ms. Yan-Shu Lee, the 60 years old and with 6 years volunteer service for Eden, to be the course instructor. She uses her expertise in Zentangle to lead parents to meditate on their paintings, and encourages them to be creative and add aboriginal tribe elements to their paintings, so that the paintings not only have a healing and stress-relieving effect, but are also full of power, hoping that through the painting process, parents can relieve the pressure of care giving.
Photo: Ms. Yan-Shu Lee, who has been volunteering with Eden for many years, serves as a course instructor, providing parents with stress relief and short term respite through Zentangle.
Photo: By continuously sketching lines, parents paint a unique Zentangle to relieve the stress of care giving.
Since the Tatong Parent-Child Center started its services in 2022, Eden has been actively understanding and listening to the needs of parents. Considering the wide coverage of Tatong Township, we have used the mobile outreach vehicle to deliver the services to every village in Tatong Township in order to let local residents know about the services of the Parent-Child Center, and at the same time, we have conducted on-site surveys on the needs of families and distributed parent-child teaching kits. In addition to enhancing parent-child interaction, it also allows children to feel the love and care of their parents, which is very helpful in cultivating positive abilities such as love, security, self-confidence and enthusiasm in children.
Photo: Eden volunteers and the children had fun group photo to show off the lanterns they completed together.
Yilan Tatong Parent-Child Center is open every Tuesday to Sunday, providing an environment for children and parents to read and play together in the Tatung Township area. In addition to the resources in the center, we also hold parent-child classes, parenting education, parenting courses and parenting counseling services, and cooperate with local churches to jointly plan parenting activities and bring toys and picture books to the rural community. Parents are also invited to participate in the event in the hope that every child can grow up happily. If you have any enquiry, please feel free to contact us at +886-3-980-9302.
