Today the Owls were really excited to know about our daily plan; they had heard about Jeju Island and Sangsang Jungle School and were eager to learn more about it. We started the spark of interest by showing them “Pororo” and having them guess where this lovely animated cartoon could be from. The children learnt fun facts about South Korea and knew they were about to start a project with children from the imaginary jungle school in Jeju island, they were going to make friends from the other side of the globe…Immediately their hands went up to ask questions? How does kimchi taste like? What is Korea’s flag like? Is the volcano in Jeju Island still awake? … The Owls class is a heterogeneous group with plenty of different nationalities, languages and cultural backgrounds. These children are used to traveling and they were especially interested in knowing how Korea is 8 hours into the future, meaning Sangsang jungle is full of children playing and learning while here in Little mole in Prague we are all still asleep.
The pathfinder was started by asking children to think of ways to share who they are with their new friends in Jeju Island. They thought of sending them postcards with drawings so we then introduced the concept of a collage. We showed some examples of different collages and provided them with several magazines, scrap paper with patterns, colors and old newspapers.
Children were asked to close their eyes and think about some questions like. Who are you? What makes you different from everyone else? What makes you unique? What do you like? What makes you smile? What can you do? How do you feel about yourself? How do you look like? And then they used this reflective moment to make a drawing the will show who they were… drawing with eyes closed was encouraged but not all of them were comfortable doing so. The drawings were done in a colored cardboard of their choosing. What color are we on the inside? After this self identity reflective exercise children were encouraged to take around 40 minutes to decide how to express who they are only using the resources previously mentioned using scissors and glue sticks. The main drawing had to be the centre of their art piece and children really enjoyed the free artistic experience so much. After cleaning up the classroom of paper scraps and glue sticks lids that were scattered all around the floor, we sat down to reflect upon the process and also their collages.
Children mentioned that the activity was a lot of fun but the thinking part was difficult. - It was hard to draw what we can do or who we are. The Owls are eager to see what kind of drawings/collages their new friends will make.
Kindly,
The Owls from Little Mole
The 5-7 year old artists at Sang Sang Jungle in Jeju, Korea are making and sharing art with the 4-6 year old artists at The Little Mole International Preschool in Prague, Czech Republic. Their new friendship will blossom through creativity!
