If anyone is going to Bali in the next couple of months, would you be able to take about 5kg of craft supplies for my friend who runs a volunteer family play school in Bali for children in and around Ubud. If so, can the stuff be dropped or collected this week whilst she is in Perth clearing out her storage unit in E Perth. Read her latest update below...... Here are some photos from my Bali kids classes on the verandahs of peoples homes, and the playgroup in a Timorese gazebo north of Ubud. The first couple of shots are of Ketut, a little boy with the somewhat crippled legs, who I met on the way home from a ngaben. I saw the two ladies helping him to walk and when one of them peeled off to go home, I stepped up and took his other hand. I think it took all of two minutes before I found myself asking him if he wanted to learn English. He enthusiastically said yes straight away, and within a couple of days I was teaching him and a group of his friends who lived around him. He was then aged six, not going to school, couldnt read, write, or speak any English. He doesnt have much of an attention span and has a lot of motor skill problems but at least hes one of those kids who can learn by hearing and so he now has some English, and hes going to school. He has a wicked sense of humour and enjoys impersonating me with Dont be naughty, Ketut. I encourage parents to join in the playgroup and youll see from these photos that Im fairly successful. They never got to do this stuff when they were kids and it gives them permission to be kids again. In some of those early shots Ive got them all making trees out of toilet rolls - curling the green cardboard on a pencil is great for developing motor skills. Older siblings often want to join in or sometimes get the job of bringing the little ones to playgroup so I put them to work reading stories from my modest collection of storybooks. Theyve all got All About Me books that weve made together. The little star, Luhtu, in one of the photos here with her book, slept with the book when she first got it. She was then 2 1/2. When I tried to get it back from her to add some photos, she wouldnt let me have it. She came to learn that when she let me have the book, she got new things in it, whether it was a photo, or some stickers, or some pretty paper pages. I didnt turn it up for this email but I have a photo of a 12-month-old holding his All About Me book away so no one could take it from him. You can see him looking at a story book in the last photo with his older brother watching on. A mum from Kupang and her little boy are in the same shot. Its one of my favourites, showing the kids clearly engaged with books - something I know would never normally happen in these families that live in truly humbling conditions. I started the All About Me books with the primary school age kids i was teaching back when i was in Pengosekan. We did pages on their favourite colour (that dictates the colour of the cover I put on their book), favourite food, favourite place, etc, I got them to trace their hands, all that sort of stuff. I didnt plan to do it with the playgroup kids but turns out the books work just as well with them. There are probably about 150 books out there now. Not all the classes happen around me. I sometimes throw the books and pencils etc into a backpack, jump on the back of a motorbike, and go to villages such as Lodtunduh, Tegallalang, Sebatu, Manuaba, or Bresala (near Payangan). The last one i did in Wayan Sumadis village, Lodtunduh, 30 kids turned up! Needless to say ill be taking as much as I can when I return to Bali on 26 May but if anyone can help by taking some craft supplies or books to Bali for me sometime in the near future, it would be a real help and very much appreciated. I dont need anyone to donate things - unless its baby board books. This is stuff Ive had in storage - patterned paper for covering their books or adding to pages in their books; acrylic paints (75ml tubes); stickers, foam stamps and ink pads; paper shape punches, some storybooks and soft toys. Cheers, You have been sent 22 pictures. Little legs.JPG Ketut (centre) and Kadek.JPG IMG_3519(1).JPG IMG_8950.JPG IMG_8954.JPG Faces of Bali - K for Ketut. Photo by Indounik September 2013.JPG IMG_9608.JPG Kids books - Luhtu with her newly covered book on her 3rd birthday October 2013.JPG IMG_9702.JPG IMG_9700.JPG IMG_9679.JPG IMG_9891.JPG Lodtunduh kids doing thumb print art, May 2013.JPG IMG_3531.JPG IMG_0064.JPG IMG_0066.JPG IMG_0138.JPG IMG_0168.JPG We start em young by Indounik Bali November 2013.JPG IMG_0286.JPG IMG_0283.JPG IMG_0364.JPG These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google.
Posted on: Sat, 17 May 2014 23:43:56 +0000
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