June 9th, 2018


Saturday June 9th 2018
Since our last session at the NAB school for the blind, we had spoken with Shalani and discussed our struggles with the older group in the previous session. She had agreed to sit in today and assist us with finding out what it is the older children would like to do with us. 
Before that however we had the first part of our day with the primary group. As it was the second Saturday of the month the children were not at school and so the group was smaller than usual as the children who attend the school but do not stay in the hostel were at home. We had planned to recap some of the songs from last week and introduce some simple rhymes. As well as this I had read about the use of Hula Hoops to assist in teaching up/down and in/out. I started by arranging two or three children around each Hula Hoop and getting them to pick it up. We firstly introduced the words up and down – which a few already knew but all picked up relatively quickly. To begin with I would say up up up up and down down down (I altered the pitch and tone of my voice getting higher for up and lower for down – silly and fun they loved this) As they are holding on to the Hula Hoop it helps with balance and also they help each other. We then repeated the process with in/out putting hands and feet in and out of the hula hoop – the physical putting your hand in and out and connecting it to the words helps link the two things together. We even managed to progress to right hand/ left hand which I was pleasantly surprised by.  After introductions of all words and movements we then managed to get the children to start to say the English words as they were doing the movements encouraging them also to use silly voices/ different pitches as a fun way to remember. As a close to this activity, we did a short version of the Hokey Pokey using the words we had learnt today. 
A recap of Heads, shoulders, Knees and toes was very successful and once we had made sure everyone was confident we sang faster and faster until the room was filled with excited giggles.
Learning the names here is a challenge, so the next rhyme I did was for us as well as them. 
Two little birds sat on a wall. One named Peter the other one Paul. 
Fly away peter, fly away Paul. Come back Peter, come back Paul.

This was great because we swapped out Peter and Paul for names of two children each time, which they loved. Also using hand movements – index fingers as the birds, and then putting each hand behind your back on fly away etc.
As a whole the primary group responded extremely well to these activities and we all had a lot of fun.
Moving on to the older group, Shalani was there as promised and she led the session. Firstly she asked the students to show us the play they are working on which was about male and female inequality in India. They seemed to be happy to share it with us and from what we could understand it was actually really well put together and they have some very confident and passionate students. We then offered the students a chance to sing for us. Some wanted to several times and clearly enjoy music. We had brought the guitar so we also then sang a few songs for them before ending the session with some games. They have chess, checkers and puzzles specially designed for both visually impaired and sighted people to play. Michael was beaten several times (by twelve year old girls may I add!) but all in all this was a fun afternoon and we feel that the pressure is off now that it has been established that we will not run sessions in the same way we do with the primary group.
We were informed that next Saturday there is a picnic scheduled and have been asked to join and assist so we will let you know how it goes!  

Becca

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