1. Preparation:
Write the idioms on small strips of paper and then either distribute them  on the table so that participants can read the text or hide in empty plastic containers from ‘surprise eggs’. Participants then can pick one randomly. 

Among the Polish idioms used were the following: ‘pogoda pod psem’, literally ‘the weather under a dog’ (see the preceding page), which means ‘rotten, gloomy weather’, when it is, for example, ‘raining cats and dogs’.
Another one was ‘bulka z maslem’ – ‘a bun with butter’, a phrase used to say that something is easy, a piece of cake.
A third one, ‘gwóźdź do trumny’, also exists in English: to put a final nail in the coffin refers to a last event or action that seals the outcome and makes it irreversible.
Yet another one, ‘gdzie diabeł mówi dobranoc’, designates a place in the middle of nowhere, where, in Polish, ‘the devil says goodnight’. 

2. Welcome the participants:
Welcome everyone to the workshop and explain its nature and purpose. If the participants don’t know each other yet, you may want to organise a short icebreaker during which they have an opportunity to present themselves and get to know each other. As a warm-up excise, use Polish tongue twisters.

3. Introducing proverbs and idioms in the history of painting:
The title of this learning module, based on Dobrochna Futro’s ‘Playing with idioms’ (2019), is the same as that of a 1975 oil painting by the US-American artist T. E. Breitenbach, in which he illustrated more than 300 common proverbs, catchphrases and clichés, such as ‘You are what you eat’ (depicting a carrot eating a carrot). Breitenbach was a great fan of the mid-16 century Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder who, in 1559, finished his painting ‘Nederlandse Spreekwoorden’ (Dutch Proverbs, or Idioms), a detail of which is shown on the right. Art historians have identified some 126 popular sayings in this painting, some of them still well-known, such as ‘Armed to the teeth’ and ‘Swimming against the tide’, while many others are no longer in use, such as ‘To find the dog in the pot’, which meant ‘to arrive too late for dinner and find that all the food has been eaten’. The painting was highly popular and gave rise to many copies, at least 16 by his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger, that sometimes differ in detail.

Another no less famous artist who often used idioms in his paintings was Marc Chagall (1887-1985), born into a Jewish family near Vitebsk (today in Belarus).* His ‘Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers’ (1912-1913) thus refers to the Yiddish saying ‘mit ale zibn finger’ – literally ‘with all seven fingers’ –, which means ‘to do one’s best’. Similarly, ‘The Fiddler’ (1913), shown on the opening page of this learning unit, has been seen as illustrating the phrase ‘Meshugener, arop fun dakh’ – ‘Lunatic, get off the roof!’ (or ‘come down to earth’) –, an idiom that alludes to a lunatic in the positive sense of a creative genius. ‘Over Vitebsk’ (1915–1920), reproduced on a Belarussian stamp, depicts a beggar carrying a bag and walking above the houses of the town, an illustration of ‘er gayt iber di Haizer’ – ‘He walks over the houses’, that is ‘from house to house’. And ‘RedCow in the Sky’ (1965) has been understood as a reference to the Yiddish ‘a ku iz gefloygn ibern dakh un geleygt an ey’ – ‘a cow flew over theroof and laid an egg ‘, designating a person who imagines unreal, impossible, fantastic things.

4. Collecting idioms (optional):
– Start by asking participants if they know any idioms and can explain their meaning or indicate the context in which they may be used. This will give you an idea how well versed they are.
– Suggest that they write them down so that might serve as a subject for their paintings or drawings.
– Consider adding some other common idioms and let participants guess their figurative meaning. If necessary, provide some examples for their usage.

In this activity we are focussing on idioms common in the heritage language rather than proverbs. If appropriate or if you wish to save time, you can skip this step and directly begin with the second activity.

5. Painting or drawing idioms:
– Let participants either freely choose one or pick the one in the plastic egg or assign an idiom to each of them (in case of small children).
– Ask participants to make a drawing (or painting) of an idiom.  

6. Presenting and discussing the art works:
– Once the drawings (or paintings) are finished within the timeframe indicated earlier, lay them out on a table or pin them to the wall.
– Ask participants in turn to present them. If appropriate, use some guiding questions, such as whether they were already familiar with the idiom, could give an example of its usage or have already used it themselves.