How to Make MeCards4Kids™: Creative Expression for Children and the Grownups in Their Lives

This book was written as a collaboration between a Los Angeles teacher and a Family Therapist. They adapted the SoulCollage® process to young children who made collaged cards to express themselves about their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. In this book, these children show you their cards and their poems and tell you what making them meant to them. There are full instructions in the book for parents and teachers about how to provide the materials and the support to children to make MeCards4Kids.

$19.95

How to Make MeCards4Kids™: Creative Expression for Children and the Grownups in Their Lives

Description

This book won the 2014 Nautilus Silver Book Award Medal in the Parenting/Family category. In it you’ll find out how to make “MeCards4Kids™.” Every “MeCard” has a collage and a poem, and the kids who love making them want you to make them too. These kids, ages 4-10, teach you how. They show you their cards and “I AM” poems, and they tell you what matters to them. You’ll learn that it is okay to make cards in your own special way.
*Parents, clinicians, and teachers: you’ll find guidance in here, too.

Seena B. Frost, founder of SoulCollage® and author of SoulCollage® Evolving says:

“Wonderful to hear about this adaptation of SoulCollage® for kids! The pictures of the cards they are making and the poems they are writing, all fill me with joy. My granddaughter, Carrie, loved making cards when she was younger. Being in a group of other children making and sharing Me-Cards would have kept her going with the process. I’m especially glad this book will help children write poems from the perspective of the images. It’s such a great exercise for developing imagination and intuition early in life. Perhaps a generation of poets is in the making. Many thanks to Nancy Weiss and Jane Raphael for bringing forth this book of MeCards4Kids™.”

*Parents often buy the book and work with their own children making MeCards4Kids® and writing “I Am…” poems. Children need a safe space to express their feelings and thoughts. We suggest that only those especially trained to work with the emotional needs of children (teachers working in the container of a school system or licensed clinicians) use this process with other people’s children.

Book Abstract 

This book was written as a collaboration between a Los Angeles teacher and a Family Therapist. They adapted the SoulCollage® process to young children who made collaged cards to express themselves about their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. In this book, these children show you their cards and their poems and tell you what making them meant to them. There are full instructions in the book for parents and teachers about how to provide the materials and the support to children to make MeCards4Kids.

Authors

Nancy Weiss, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and spiritual director in Los Angeles. She uses SoulCollage® regularly with her clients, blending depth psychology, dream work, and expressive arts. MeCards4Kids™ is the product of a three-year collaboration with teacher, Jane Raphael, and 60 kids. Through this rich process, Nancy experiences the great pleasure of guiding children in the expression of their inner depth and wisdom.

Jane Raphael is a thirty-year veteran teacher and Child Development Specialist in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In the classroom, she is committed to each child’s social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development. Jane sees the creation and sharing of MeCards as a way for students to find their voices and grow in their capacity to take in another point of view.

Reviews

“Making MeCards™ makes me feel good because it makes my heart open and that makes me happy to be me!”
~ Jasmine, 1st grade

“The beauty of this book is that it is a work about creative self-expression by children, for children. Very young children instinctively understand the power of choosing imagery and creating poetry to bring joy, deepen self-understanding, and facilitate healing. As a bereavement counselor and SoulCollage® facilitator, I was particularly moved by the poignant tributes to lost loved ones…MeCards4Kids(tm) is an indispensable resource to help children and their families move through life’s seasons and changes.”
~ Roberta Rook, LCPC, SoulCollage® Facilitator

“MeCards4Kids™ provides children (and adults!) with a wonder-filled, imaginative learning experience. Children explore their feelings through a process that develops literacy and artistic skills as they produce pictures, poems, and stories. And they can share and read to one another—creating a community of readers, writers, and artists.”
~ Dorothy G. Clark, Ph.D., Prof. of English and Children’s Lit. Specialist

“A child enjoys creating art and telling stories as part of his or her natural development. MeCards4Kids™ gives children the opportunity to express feelings, gain a stronger sense of self, and build the confidence necessary to give voice to whatever is going on in their inner worlds.”
~ Kathryn (Kat) Kirby, M.Ed, ATR-BC, Art Therapist, SoulCollage® Facilitator and Trainer, Dean, SoulCollage® Institute

“MeCards4Kids™ is pure magic. The heights of imagination and depth of feeling my children have tapped into in creating their cards are gifts they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.”
~ Iona Brindle, Parent and MeCards4Kids™ Volunteer

“Nancy Weiss and Jane Raphael take seriously C.G.Jung’s well-known observation: “The hands have a wisdom that goes beyond that of the head.” In this inspiring work, they’ve gathered the artistic and poetic wisdom of young children’s simple, yet profound, MeCards4Kids™. How fortunate these boys and girls are to have had ‘art-friends’ like Nancy and Jane. Readers of any age will find themselves reaching for art materials to replicate the inner passages of the young artists in this work.”
~ Betsy Caprio Hedberg, D.Min., Founder: Center for Sacred Psychology, Los Angeles, California

“What Nancy Weiss and Jane Raphael have done over the course of 3 years is create a way for SoulCollage®, which has spread throughout the world like wildfire, to start the process of “undoing” the burdens we each carry from our early years.

“As a professional, certified healer with more than 30 years’ experience in family healthcare, I’ve observed that illness begins from the inside-out. What we see as symptoms, whether physical or mental/emotional/spiritual, have everything to do with the parts of ourselves that we’ve suppressed, initially from external situations, later as a survival habit. In the spirit of Robert Bly’s “black bag,” SoulCollage® in the form of MeCards4Kids™ begins the process of bringing what has been buried to light, for integration, wholeness and ease of heart.

I attended Nancy’s presentation of her book and these children at the 2013 International SoulCollage® Facilitators’ Conference. The videos of the various children in the book were impressive and touched my heart. Nancy encouraged our group of adults to try out the “child-friendly” method of doing a SoulCollage® card reading. We sat in a circle, all SoulCollage® Facilitators, and it was fun to engage in “reading” our cards in this way — a simulation that, all agreed, provided first-hand experience of the poignancy of SoulCollage® to transform such young lives, too.

Life is filled with suffering under the best of circumstances — suffering which largely goes unnoticed, except by the very conscious, aware adult. MeCards(tm) will no doubt provide an avenue of expression often missing for the young, and definitely nurture dignity and self-empowerment.

This book highly deserves its recognition as the recipient of the 2014 Nautilus Silver Medal Book Award in the Parenting/Family category. If there’s one book to buy for your child (and yourself), How to Make MeCards4Kids(tm) is it. it’s also one of the best antidotes for our growing population of children hungry for presence and community.”
~ Sue Gelber, RSHom(NA), CCH, Founder: The Homeopathic Alternative, SoulCollage® Facilitator and Spiritual Director

Table of Contents
  • A NOTE TO GROWN-UPS…
  • A NOTE TO KIDS: What Is a MeCard?
  • LET’S GET ORGANIZED…
  • HOW TO MAKE YOUR COLLAGE…
  • HOW TO WRITE YOUR I AM POEM…
  • KIDS SHARE THEIR MECARDS!
  •          All about Me
  •          Nature
  •          Animals
  •          Heroes and Helpers
  •          Feelings
  • STORYTELLING WITH MECARDS…
  • DEAR GROWN-UPS: A CLOSING NOTE
  • APPENDIX
  •          Meet the Kids
  •          Journey Into the Imagination
  •          Questions and Answers
  •          Resources

Additional information

Weight 0.7 lbs
Dimensions 9.25 × 7.25 × 0.25 in