Posts

Image
  Todays games were inviting kids to open awareness to absorb everything around at once, space around, movements, events at the same time staying alert - looking for the Killer in the group. Killer is a classic theater game that’s fun and is enjoyed by kids as well as adults. We slowly built up the game by playing lighter variations, and struggled a lil bit initially to communicate the rules to little kids but after a few iterations they caught up.  We had the session planned around freeze/go type of movements. Simple prompts such as fly like a bird/ roll in mud etc were given, and they had to improvise the movement/action until the freeze instruction was given, upon which they froze for a few seconds. Letting body loose and free when coupled with demand of instantly stopping all that and contain and hold back their excitement was something children loved and thoroughly enjoyed. Freeze is a game that children all over the world play. In our variation it involved improvisation skill
Post a Comment
Read more

Little one, Listen to your body!

Image
  Todays opening game was to form pairs according to a song and then freeze in a formation according to the suggestion in song, touching random body parts and forming a   stable structure.   Does our mind inform our body more, or is it vice versa? Consider also, that – mind is, what body does.   Our body keeps communicating to us through sensations – touch, pressure, tingling, tastes, vision.. in fact if you close your eyes and pay attention to your body, you can see it is nothing but a cloud of these experiences. Unless you can make sense of it, know it and manage this huge drama, you will most often be a puppet playing at the strings of these same sensations without even realizing it.   How can we enable our little ones to slow down and start looking at these visceral experiences? Todays exercise was targeted at the same. Can they decipher what their body is whispering to them? It is important to listen, it is equally important to communicate. They tried, and when they su
Post a Comment
Read more

Breath, Movement and Flow

Image
  Image: Children trying to capture their experience of different movements and involved emotions. It s in conflict with the usual 'object-focused' drawing they are familiar with, but at some point its evident that they successfully break out from that style into a more abstract kind of expression. Breath and movement are deeply interconnected. When breath flow, movements also flow. When breath is staggered, body becomes stiff. When breath and body are in sync, movements become harmonious, infused with freedom and self expression.   We started with exercises that encourage children to explore different kinds of breath, advancing to blowing which includes more power and intention. Blowing ping pong balls, balloons.. and then into movements which incorporated breath. Move like a balloon which is released free into the air, move like ping pong ball that being blown around.. Move like a paper that's being shape shifted etc. Big, free, vulnerable, authentic movements.  Objects a
Post a Comment
Read more

Little Christmas Stars

Image
   We are all set for holidays to begin and we wanted to express the excitement, the joy, and anticipation for the upcoming season. What else other than the christmas stars can capture all the thrill!! We explored different ways to form stars first with our hands and then with our body and its energy, and finally as a group. To wind up Salvin demonstrated how to make origami stars. He talked about how the big bang and how stars were formed, and how the tiniest components that forms our body, could have once been a part of a distant star. Also, how our inner light shines through our actions and how, when we beam in happiness and so many other emotions that make us feel good, such as curiosity, excitement, compassion, thrill etc etc, we ourself become a star! May all our children shine with their unique light and energy all through their life!! We ended our session by asking them to imagin that the star they made is themselves and decorating them. Self love, self care is the first step o
Post a Comment
Read more

Blindfolded Partnership Activities

After the regular Hello song, Salvin suggested playing a variation of “Snake” game, which included blindfolding of few participants and guiding/driving them by another who is not blindfolded. However, the children wanted to play the classical Snake. Then someone wanted to play a game they play at school with their friends, then everybody had suggestions about which game to play. In a moment the children were all shouting their favourite game and wanting to play that. It took a while for us to compose ourselves and then Salvin showed them the new blindfolds we had stitched for them, and that got them hooked. Everybody wanted to blindfold now, and we played a game in which pairs were formed and one person was blindfolded and the other guided them to discover objects that were hidden in the hall and bring them back. The driver was not allowed to use words, but had to direct the blind folded person through signals - taps on shoulder etc. The chaos continued for a while more as smaller chil
Post a Comment
Read more

Exploration of forms through vision, touch and feel

Image
We started with hello song and as warm up, we played tom and jerry. This is an interesting game which encourages random pair formation among children and sudden role reversal of prey into predator and vice versa. We have observed that sometimes kids have strong preferences for who their partner is, and we want to consciously soften this pattern so that bonding across the group is more uniform. Games in which partners come together and disperse, is being used as a tool to achieve this. After the game, we moved towards the core activity of the session, which was to figure out an object just from its touch and feel sensations. We had collected a bunch of day to day objects such as animal forms, models of furniture, utensils, vehicles etc.. We blindfolded the children one by one, and gave one object in their hand, and asked them to figure out what that is.( We used different blindfolds for individual children, in order to maintain hygiene.) They had to feel the object with their fingers an
Post a Comment
Read more

Feelings and Flowing LInes

Image
After a couple of week s break, we were all very glad to catch up. We started  with greeting and acknowledging everyone s presence. In the last session, after a craftwork, we had asked children how they feel. We observed it was a difficult question for them to reflect on, and with some hesitation, couple of them had responded with words like “good” and “nice” etc. We planned to work on the vocabulary around feelings a little bit more, and did an activity in which there were faces depicting different emotions.  Sheets were of three different colors- Green, Yellow and Red. These translates to zones of regulation. Green zone is where we feel “good” and “Nice” but these are not feelings themselves. Which feelings makes us feel “good”? Probably, happiness, excitement, confidence, curiosity, peacefulness etc. Yellow sheet is for the yellow zone - where it starts getting difficult. Bored, annoyed, frustrated, confused, shy, morose, melancholy, nervous etc.  Red is where we are out of control.
Post a Comment
Read more