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 children ran amok competing to be blind folded or to play driver, but slowly the game settled and elder children connected with the challenge. As the game progressed we also realised the need for more sophisticated rules to execute this, some of which evolved as we advanced.

As the core activity of the day we had plans to continue blindfolded object exploration further and taxonomy, however by the time the Guide game was over, we were nearing the timeline. So we decided to go with a smaller activity, which was a variation of the Guide game. In this, pairs were formed, one partner was blindfolded, another was the instructor. Both had pen and paper. The instructor would verbally describe a picture, and the blindfolded child would follow those instructions to crate the image. The instructor also creates this image while describing it. Once the excercise is finished its time to remove the blindfold, keep both pics together, and have a good laugh. And some thoughts. We took multiple rounds to get children comfortable with this game, with Salvin being the only instructor first and all the children blind folded, then slowly reducing group size until pairing was possible.

Vision and words, two major blocks of communication, was removed as an experiment to see how children managed to communicate in their absence. Little ones did find it frustrating, but the play element encouraged them to face that challenge and overcome that hurdle. Sometimes when they finally found an object hidden in not so obvious places, there were shouts of jubilation. Its an important skill, to persevere in the face of challenges, and we felt children did engage in age appropriate manner.  

The blindfolded drawing exercise was meant to help children perceive shapes and drawings in their mind, instead of on the paper, which is how they usually do. To shift the perception from visual realm to a mental space, and transferring them onto paper without the help of visual feedback, might have challenged them to focus, and understand forms one level deeper we hope.