NAIDOC Day

Today we had a day full of culture, we created various authentic experiences to help the children celebrate the Indigenous people of Australia. The use of ochre was popular with Olivia and Tamryn. Sarah guided the children through this process, they ground the ochre with their fingers and slowly added water. Three colours were created. We used the ochre to paint our faces.





Sarah our Indigenous education facilitator organised for us to have a Didgeridoo at preschool for this special day. During group time the boys had a turn at playing the Didgeridoo' as traditionally only men can play this instrument... We discussed this tradition and gave the children a chance to reflect and challenge this idea. We were very proud of how accepting the girls were of this tradition even though they felt a bit left out. Each boy made a different sound and received many "ooo's and aahhhhs" from their peers. Malu was very impressed and placed his ear at the base of the didgeridoo to hear and feel the vibrations.



"That sounded like an elephant" The sounds created many laughs....



                       

Aiken lead the group in playing the Didgeridoo as he is the oldest and this is in line with tradition.



Later that day we went on an Aboriginal Native Plant walk. Each group of children had a leaf/branch from a native tree and had to find the tree in the playground.



In the afternoon we printed the Aboriginal flag from tiles onto material. We talked about the symbolism of the flag and what each colour represents. Red- The earth, yellow - the sun, black - the people. Amelia and Summer were especially interested in this and made several flags.



We also sung 'Heads and Shoulders' in Gumbayniggirr language with Elaine our lovely colleague who came to support us on this special day. Elaine has been the Indigenous education facilitator at the preschool for many years.



Finally, thanks to Kel we had the opportunity to dig for pippies in the sand pit and create our very own midden. The children took their shoes of and squirmed their toes in the sand to find the pippies.