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As a part of this unit, we have explored how children learn through aural and kinaesthetic languages.

Young children are very curious about their surroundings, they observe and engage with the place through play. We have looked at concepts of connecting with place through sound, movement and drama.

In the previous assessment, I did a field visit to a local park and explored the environment with an added lens of deep listening and perspective of drama.

In this assessment, I will be talking about the learning experiments as I assimilate the concepts we have gone through from the coursework.

I have decided to create the experiences as little games for children.

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Hello children,

My name is Tina and today I am here to play a little game with you. Let us see if we can spot some drama around us.

Do you know what is a drama? Drama is a setup that happens on a stage, there are actors and actresses who enact and make us feel the emotions. What if I told you that we are surrounded by actors all the time and everything around us is a stage?

Let us try to spot some drama, in the nature around us.

Can we see the birds - picking up a fight with each other, can you see the little duck brothers and sisters, all going in a queue? Can you see the gulls hunting for food?

What more drama do you see? Do you think that they are all great actors?

Let us play.

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Bangarra Education Resources (2015): Mutton Bird https://youtu.be/o-PV98Oshkc

Oliveros, Pauline (2015): The difference between hearing and listening, TEDx Talks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QHfOuRrJB8

Schafer, Murray (2009): Listen - National Film Board of Canada
https://www.nfb.ca/film/listen/

Ungunmerr, Miriam-Rose (2017): Inner Deep Listening and Quiet Still Awareness - Dadirri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tow2tR_ezL8

Wilson, R, 2007, Children, creative play, and the natural environment, in R. Wilson (edn) Nature and Young Children: Encouraging Creative Play and Learning in Natural Environments, Routledge. Ch 1, pp 1-18

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Hello Children,

I am an educator, and I am here to play a small game with you. Let me ask you this - can we see with our eyes closed? Of course, we cannot. What if I told you that we could?

Let us try and once we are finished, we might be able to see with sounds.

Do you know what is a sound?

Sound is a type of energy that is created from a vibration and then it travels through air and reaches our ear, where we understand what type of sound it is.

We all hear sounds. There can be many types of sounds. When different sounds get mixed, then we call it a soundscape. Today, we will do a small activity.

We will close our eyes and only focus on what we hear. Can you tell me what are the different types of sounds we can hear?

Are we able to tell where is the sound coming from? If we can, we can see even with our eyes closed.

Let's play.

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Murray (2009) in his short film talks about soundscapes and Oliveros (2015) introduced us to the difference between hearing and listening.

In my field visit, I tried to focus on deep listening on spotting different kinds of sounds. So as a part of creating the learning experience, I decided to turn it into little games for children.

As a part of course materials, we have seen examples such as Hollander (2023), tells us about the beauty of singing for brain development in children, bonding in children.

I have turned my learning and own experiences into these experiments.

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Ungunmerr (2017), in her film Dadirri, introduced us to deep listening and associating with the sounds around us. I had the film in mind for this experiment.

I have done the experiments in the same location as my field visit and my daughter Adwitiya helped me with it. Here is a video of our activities.

What worked well: It was a very windy and sunny day, when we did our experiments. So there were a lot of sounds. The strong wind added a background sound, but when we listened carefully, we could hear the birds, different types of ducks and other dogs that came for a walk. The rustling of dry leaves also added a nice effect. In my view, the game was a success. We were able to identify the sources - in other ways, we could see with our eyes closed.

Going Forward:
We matched our photos and were able to identify some of the species we spotted, such as:

Australian Wood Duck

Chestnut Teal

Going forward, it would be interesting to know more about the local species so that I could tell about them to children. It would also help to be able to tell them how different types of birds sound.

I think the game was successful and it helped build confidence for working with young children in future.

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Ungunmerr (2017), in her film Dadirri, introduces us to a deep sense of self-realisation.

I have observed as a part of my country visit that there are so much to observe when we can truly connect with the place. Hence, as a part of this assessment, I am trying to inspire children, to observe the drama around us, in a natural environment and spot more.

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What worked well: As I have mentioned before, I did the experiments as games with my daughter and in the same location I did the field work. I did not know whether she would find it interesting, but when we took a closer look, we found a lot of drama in the nature. Most of it was birds fighting each other or for food, but there were a lot of drama to spot and I noticed a lot of little children in the same area, observing this. It gave me an idea that they are curious about the natural environment.

Here is a vide of the activity on the field, so in my view it was successful and gives me the idea to make it more interesting in future.

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Hello children,

I am an educator and I am here to play a little game with you. Before we play this game, I have to ask - do you think you can dance without feet? I know what you will say - probably not. But let us play the game and find out.

We are here in the park and we are going to look at the trees, the bushes and even the grass. Do they have feet? No, they don't but they still dance.

They just don't dance as they like, but they move, in a rhythm. Look at them and they all move together, swaying in the wind, moving in the same direction. They do all of this together.

Let us look at the leaves, they dance too. Look at the little flowers in the bushes. Do they have feet - no, they don't, yet they move with the wind, they are all dancing together.

Tell me what you think of this little game - can you spot a tree, that is moving differently? I will tell you. Let us look at the reflections on the water and how they dance.

Can you spot someone dancing? Let's play.

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As a part of our course material, we have looked at a very powerful stage performance by Bangarra Education Resources (2015): Mutton Bird - and it showed me the importance of movement.

We have seen how children are curious about the natural environment. Wilson (2007) tells us that playing in natural environments fosters children’s naturalistic intelligence.

I have used the learnings and observations from field visits here - to come up with this little game, to interest young children. I have added my ideas but I am also prompting them to spot more, if they can.

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I have carried out the experiment in the same location as the country visit. I had an idea about bringing out the theme of dance from the movements in nature and my daughter enjoyed doing this with me. I have a video of our activity in the park.

What worked well:  It was a windy afternoon as opposed to a still one. So I was able to show and explain to my daughter how all the trees were moving together from the wind. In my view, the idea behind this experiment was successful.

Going Forward: The concepts of dance through trees, and leaves moving were interesting. Because the experiment was interactive and fun, it appealed to my daughter and I believe that gives me ideas about how to engage young children in such acitivities.