I had planned a variety of activities for the day, including a story about the Chipko Movement and brainstorming about the word confidence. However, most of our day went into making the mask. Children had expressed interest in craft-related activities in our earlier feedback sessions. The informal nature of the space and calling it a summer camp also means that children expect to participate in activities associated with this space, which are different from their regular school activities. A child who lives in the neighbourhood of some of the children attending the camp, but attends a different school, came with her parent to join the summer camp. The principal, initially hesitant, asked me if she could join the camp. I was very happy that the camp could allow children from other schools as well to join in. This means that the summer camp can become a space where children from all over the neighbourhood can come together to engage in literacy and other activities. I am hopeful that this will also give me the trust of the community and continue this informal engagement next year as well.
Reading Corner
About four children were already in the classroom before 9 am when I entered the class. They were talking to each other. With their help, I displayed the books around the reading corner and asked them to use this time to read. Quite a few of the children picked up the books; however, many others did not want to read. Some of them just look at the pictures but do not read much of the text. I saw two girls reading the book together. I do not want to introduce new books while children have not read any new ones. Perhaps in the coming weeks, I need to introduce more reading-related activities and link them to our literacy-related activities (If you have any suggestions for such activities, do write them in the comments). I remember on day 3 when children made a map of their surroundings, I also read Sameer Ka Ghar (Tulika Books) book to them. The book is was intriguing to children, as it has the movie Inception (Christopher Nolan) like narrative. The book starts with Sameer’s house, its location in a neighbourhood, then moves to the city (all the while showcasing Sameer’s house and its changing scale in relation to the geography), location of Sameer’s house in Maharashtra, then the country India, continent of Asia, the world, on planet Earth, the Solar system and finally the galaxy. Although the book is designed for young readers, it was very interesting for children in the camp as well, who fall between the ages of 10 and 14 years. Given the difference in reading levels and limited general knowledge among these children, the short sentences and their visuals played an important role in revealing concepts of the state, continent, solar system, and galaxy. In addition, the changing size of Sameer’s house helped children understand the physical size of the concepts, as they continued to look for Sameer’s house in each visual. See some examples of visuals from the book below.
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| Images from Sameer Ka Ghar (Tulika books) |
Children continued to skim, read or talk to other children for the first 30 mins of the day. In the meantime, I asked Salim, who had his head on the table, to help me cut the chart paper into different sizes for our lion mask-making activity.
Lion Mask Making
I had planned the activity to last 1 hour; however, most of our day was spent making this mask. This was mainly because of the limited number of scissors, which had to be shared among children. This was also a learning for me to have more material for children to avoid the wastage of time. While I showed children each step and helped others with each step of the mask, children like Sahil and a few other children finished their tasks and began playing or engaging in other activities at the back of the classroom. They began to push or nudge each other. I continued to remind them to help their peers, but also realised that this is not something they were used to. Especially Sahil. When I asked children to pick up any garbage they had produced from the mask-making activity, Sahil often hesitated and did not like to engage in things that required him to help or support anyone else. However, I want to continue to push him to do so.
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| Children with their lion masks |
Given the limited number of scissors, each step of the mask-making took time. Children also lost patience or found it difficult to make cuts, especially around the eyes of the mask. In some cases, children ran around or threw scissors at each other for the purpose of sharing. I had to pay attention to make sure no one was hurt in the process and often raised my voice to share these concerns.
Once we finished making the masks, I gathered the children for a group photo, which produced some excitement. It was also exciting for me to see them with their finished masks.
Planning of Short Story Performance
Next, I got the previous day’s groups together to continue to plan their performances for the 23rd May exhibition. The group with Salim, Karthik, Shweta, Ruhi and other children immediately began to plan their scripts. They used their previous day’s notes to work further. The other group that included Sahil, Khwaja and other children continued to stay away, with Sahil showing no interest in the activity. They began planning Pokémon cards and other games. I asked them to stop this activity and plan the task they were assigned. However, instead, Sahil sat around and passed snarky comments on other children’s actions or efforts. I am constantly torn between letting him continue in the activity and asking him to leave the classroom. As he continues to disrupt and distract other children. Finally, I mentioned that if they did not make any effort to create a performance, only group 1 would perform on the final day. This rattled Sahil, and he said he would wait for Khwaja to come back and plan this with him. In the meantime, I group 1 to use children from group 2 and continue planning the performance. I also appointed Ruhi and Shweta as directors of the activity. I was going to support them, but they were now responsible for putting the act together.
Fire in the Mountain Run Run Run
The running game has become the go-to game for children to relieve boredom and reset themselves. However, it is also where I get to see children’s peer relations. Since the game requires children to form groups, only children who are able to create a sense of camaraderie between peers get to find the game. Nevertheless, given the hesitation between girls and boys towards physical touch of any kind and a smaller number of girls compared to boys, they are often left out sooner in the game than most boys. The game, however, continues to be popular with repeated requests from children to play it a number of times.
Conclusion
To keep the spirits high, we sang “We Will Rock You” by Queen and then reflected on our week’s activities. Remembering all things children learnt, origami animals they made, quiz and computer-related activities they engaged in. I also informed the children about a few activities we may engage in next week.
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