The Owls here in Little Mole preschool were thrilled to hear we had some messages from our Icelandic friends. They were eager to listen to all the messages but when they learned that the messages were in an unknown language we decided to train our ears and warm up our listening skills first. We opened our ears to listen and try to identify all the sounds around, we also listened to different types of music in different languages.
The Owls enjoyed understanding some of the lyrics and had lots of fun listening to how other languages sound. We all shared a few words in our mother tongue to train our ears to new and unknown sounds and we realized that in our classroom we had 7 different languages and we were thankful to all speak English together, otherwise we would not be able to understand each other or our new friends across the Ocean.
The Owls were provided with a white cardboard and crayons. We heard all the recordings in Icelandic and after a minute children could pick a coloured crayon and use it to draw the sounds and words they were hearing. Most children closed their eyes to let their hands draw the intensity, rhythm and melody of the language they were hearing, none of them had ever heard it before and they were quite puzzled.
After coloring the sounds, we focused on the meaning of each recording. Children were having some free time to play and show each other the way they had colored the messages and sounds and then I called them one by one to play the recording once more. Each owl heard one message and its translation, they were provided with markers, paint or pencils to draw some of the things our friends in Iceland liked: Football, dogs and cats, starwars books, watching Tv, eating candy, coloring or riding a hippo were some of the favorites. After all the artwork was done we took the painting of sounds and meanings and had a small show and tell so we could all go over each message and what it meant.
Owls are surprised that most things the children liked in Iceland were the same as the things they liked here in Prague, they love the way we learnt about our friends using drawings and coloring the sound of their voice, and ultimately, they are eager to meet them in a video call one day.
Now we cannot wait to get started in the third pathfinder and learn more about our friends.
All the best,
Toti
The 5-6 year old Owls at The Little Mole in Prague, Czech Republic and the 4 year olds at Sólvellir in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland will start their new friendship from September to December 2021.
When you click on the above image, you will be taken to the online gallery which showcases the fall Dear You artworks including The Owls and their friends in Iceland.