Junior School 

Royal Children’s Hospital Project

It all began in 2017, in our Year 8 Health and Alive class, where we found out we had the chance to create something that could be donated to the wider community to help those in need.

At first, we had no idea what to make for our project, but we knew we wanted to make something that would give other children joy. We thought about our own childhood and what made us happy, so we decided to make a colouring book and activity book.

With that in mind we brainstormed what we wanted to base the books on. Many ideas came to mind, but we ultimately came to the decision of basing the books on the alphabet. This meant that every child would be included as well as having something to help them learn or further their knowledge (depending on their skill level).

After we decided on the design, we began to draw drafts of the pages we were going to include. This meant the front and back covers of the books, the messages inside the books, and a page for each letter of the alphabet.

For the colouring book, this meant drawing a letter in the centre of the page, followed by four smaller drawings of things beginning with that letter surrounding it. This process took a very long time, but we managed to get each page drawn within a few weeks.

For the activity book, this meant deciding which activities we were going to have for each letter, making sure to vary them so that it wasn’t repetitive. We decided to include word searches, cross words, unscrambling words, colour-by-numbers and many more.

Once the drafts were checked by us and our teacher, it was time to create the good copies. This step was the most difficult as there were lots of technical difficulties, but we managed to push through to finish these books.

For the colouring book, this meant hopping on to Adobe Photoshop and digitally drawing the front and back covers, the messages, and each of the 26 letters. As well as learning many new drawing skills on Photoshop, we also learnt that it is very important to continuously save your work as technology will not always be your friend.

For the activity book, this also meant we had to digitally draw the covers and the messages, however we also needed to find online programs that would help us create our own activities. Finding the programs and using them was a struggle, but after months of creating, we were on to editing.

Each and every page of the colouring book and the activity book was checked multiple times by us and our teacher over the course of weeks. Mistakes were fixed, colours were altered, and even additional elements were added at this stage.

After that our teacher, Ms Dawson, helped organise the publishment of the books regarding the price, quantity and quality. Helping us to publish 200 copies of each book at a reasonable price. We are thankful for Tigerprint for making our colouring and activity books a reality, as well as our teacher Ms Dawson for being there for us every step of the way.

From start to finish this whole project took us one year and on Wednesday the 5th of December, we finally went to the Royal Children’s Hospital alongside Ms Dawson and George, where we donated the 400 books.

We met up with Laura Buck, the person who helped organise our trip and the donations, and she took us to meet two ladies who have also helped at the Royal Children’s Hospital for many years. We got to hear their stories about how they came to work there and everything they’ve done for the hospital since their arrival. We then presented this very PowerPoint to Laura Buck and went through the process of creating the colouring and activity books from start to finish. She gave us certificates for helping the hospital with our donations, followed by a bunch of photos taken by our school photographer, George.

This Christmas at the Royal Children’s hospital, our books will be wrapped up and gifted to the children who are currently staying there, either awaiting surgery or recovering, and we hope that our books can bring them a little joy and happiness in the holiday season.

Hristina Travica and Taylor Stevens