Last week, we organised a day with an orphanage that the project has worked a lot with with since its beginning in 2002. Seventeen children between the ages of six and sixteen took part from the Vashist orphanage in this session that took place in the main park in Manali during their holidays. We wanted to give the children an active and fun day, increasing cultural awareness in a stimulating and creative way. As the level of English is very mixed, we chose to use the visual Aboriginal symbols with simple English to encourage all the children.
Session structure
Intro-brainstorm Australia; animals, climate, sports, people etc.
Brief history of Aborigines and their use of symbols. Flash cards were used- the children guessed what the different symbols meant.
Quiz- Prepared sheets (in resources) were given to groups and they had to match the symbol with what they thought it represented. Peer marked by other groups.
Hunt- In advance cards with symbols drawn on were hidden in the forest, under rocks, in trees etc. Groups were sent out to find as many as possible then re-grouped to judge.
Making symbols- We then spent some time with our groups creating symbols learnt from collected stones in a guessing game and suggesting objects for them to try and represent with the stones.
Art- Contrasting colours and shapes of dhal can be used to make representations of the symbols by generously gluing (use PVA) to pieces of cardboard collected from old boxes etc. Alternatively, you can just draw a selection of the symbols on templates of boomerangs depending on level of drawing or materials.
The kids and all of us enjoyed the day greatly, we wore ourselves out and we felt it was a very productive session; we definitely earned our ice creams!
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