A Fulfilling and Wonderful Day

We started our day at the Assi Illam day care center, it being our second visit the children were more familiar with us and the warm welcome we received was heartwarming. We sang children rhymes, their favorite for the day being the ABC song. Their excitement and abundant energy was exhilarating especially as we ran around in circles and jumped as high as we can. An unexpected surprise was their joy at seeing their image mirrored in the camera screen, their laughter warmed our hearts as we ran around snapping pictures during playtime. As per the schedule we left around 12 to prepare for our classes at Christ King Primary school to teach the Fourth and Fifth graders.Today’s lesson at the school focused on expressing emotions and feelings through colours and art. We began by teaching the student The Colour Wheel, explaining primary colours, secondary colours and complementary colours. We discussed how different colours can express emotions such as happiness, sadness and joy by showing them an example of one of the volunteers artwork.

We then asked them to use shapes such as a circle, triangle, diamond and a heart to draw their emotions on paper. The children were obviously excited and most had happiness as the emotion they wanted to express. Once they all finished the children all had a go at explaining their drawing and emotions to their classmates. Their creativity showed in their beautiful drawing and choices of colours. We were also impressed with how well they responded to instruction, especially when we asked them to clean up and organize all the colour pencils. Towards the end of the class the forth graders sang a few songs in English and Tamil, and we enjoyed the Tamil song the most. The lesson ended with the children happy that they will be taking their drawings with them.We left the school to head to Seam’s center, as we entered the boys came running our way to welcome us. They were excited to begin playing games as soon as we walked in. We started with a game of chess where the boys out smarted our every move. The other volunteers then played games with the kids while Swathy applied henna to my hand, her intricate hand work was impressive. We spent the next 2 hours playing games and talking with the girls and boys it was one of the most rewarding two hours as the children opened up and started telling us about their interest.

Overall the children’s excitement at Assi Illam, King Christ Primary School and Seam’s center made it into a fulfilling and wonderful day.

Mahra