Are you familiar with NAIDOC Week?
NAIDOC Week is celebrated from Sunday the 3rd of July to Sunday the 10th of July. The word NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, NAIDOC Week has been a week-long event since 1975. It’s all about celebrating Australia’s incredible Indigenous history and culture and in 2022 the theme is Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up!
We are incredibly proud of the differing experiences our very creative Educators designed to support our children’s understanding and recognition for the oldest living culture in the world.
NAIDOC week with our Possums
The Possums children enjoyed a variety of experiences, listening to a dreamtime story called ‘The Rainbow Serpent’. The Rainbow Serpent is considered one of the most powerful and widespread Ancestral Beings of Aboriginal Australia. The story describes a time long ago when the Earth was flat. The serpent was one of the Dreamtime creatures who held great powers and gave shape to the Earth. On our return to Inspired, together we helped one another to use our favourite shredded paper to create our very own rainbow serpent, so much fun! The children enjoyed many more activities including finger painting, painting, pasting.
Click here to listen to ‘The Rainbow Serpent’
Creating our very own Echidnas
Our Echidnas children have been very busy, painting, crafting and now creating their very own echidna with clay and matchsticks. The children were provided with clay and were encouraged to squish, mould and roll the clay into a ball before decorating with matchsticks and google eyes.
We are so proud of our echidnas who demonstrated great persistence and creativity as they spent time carefully shaping their echidnas and practising their fine motor skills.
Koalas paint with nature
Our Koalas were so excited to explore and create their very own traditional paints, we gathered ochre clay and carefully crushed the clay into a fine powder, next we added water and to colour our new traditional paints we used crushed gum leaves to create the colour green, charcoal from a fire to create the colour black. The children were excited and amazed (educators too) just how simple it was to create sustainable, natural paint using materials found in our very own outdoor environment. The children discovered a new appreciation for art as we explored our unique creative talents, whilst learning a new technique that is remarkably similar to how paints are created by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Other activities included, playdough, creating our very own tapping sticks to be incorporated into our group time and music lessons and listening to and dancing to traditional Aboriginal music.
Our Emu artists
Our Emus children thrived and smiled during a variety of different art experiences, from creating dot art on their boomerang designs, painting a rainbow serpent and experimenting with sand and water.
Boomerang Fact:
The first boomerangs were made from a single piece of carved wood. The carver heated the wood in hot ashes and then bent it to get the right shape. Today boomerangs used for sports are often made of plywood or fibre glass. Their shape can be very different from the curved shape of traditional boomerangs. For example, some modern boomerangs have three blades in the shape of the letter Y.
Dream time Music and Storytelling with our Kookaburras
Our Kookaburras children were invited to a very special morning respecting and sharing our understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Together, we joined in a circle and shared our Acknowledgement to Country.
Did you know every morning at 9:00am, our Kookaburras children engage in a welcoming circle?
Have you heard our Acknowledgement to Country?
Here is the land, here is the sky,
Here are my friends, and here am I.
Together, we thank the Bunurong people,
for the land in which we play.
Let’s enjoy our day,
Hip Hip Hooray.
Other activities included, discovering aboriginal patterns and animals, learning traditional cooking methods of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, creating Aboriginal inspired art, listening and dancing to music and sharing stories to build our understanding of our fabulous home Australia – Aboriginal land.
Lessons, arts and crafts with our Wallabies
Our Wallabies have been incredibly busy from creating their very unique tapping sticks with recycled materials (collected from Nature Kindergarten) and reusing donated wool to decorate and add colour and personality to our musical tapping sticks. The children were invited to explore and understand aboriginal patterns and with great confidence many of our children were able to recreate the pattern in our sensory trays. Our favourite activity had to be recreating the Aboriginal flag with biscuits, icing and dried banana chips. We can assure you they look as good as they tasted!
