Kornmehl
Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl Centre Emanuel Pre-school
Arava/Australia partnership
We recently sent a package to our buddies in Gan Rimon in the Arava in Israel. It took seven long weeks to arrive, but last week we received notification that they had received it. The children were very excited to open their package and explore its contents. The package contained an Australian flag, a boomerang, a small Koala, a small kangaroo and a little keyring koala for each child. The children explored the objects and came back to us with an interactive worksheet and some questions to ask us about Australia. They have also set up an Australian learning corner in their classroom. We are excited to explore these questions with the Starfish and Dolphin children over the next week and hear their responses, which we will send back to the Arava.
This partnership enables the children to connect on a deeper level with Israel and children just like them who live in another country.
Aboriginal perspectives and learning
Last week Thursday, we were lucky to be entertained by Neville Williams Boney from Dream On, who conducted an interactive workshop on Aboriginal culture. Neville is a proud Wiradjuri man from Wagga Wagga, and a teacher and dancer. Neville has been performing since the age of 15 and loves sharing his knowledge and culture of how he grew up. Neville also teaches dance and culture at the Australian Reptile Park and at schools across the Central Coast.
Neville taught us a way to remember our left and right side of our body, by making us aware of the left side having our heart and love in it and the right side no heart and no love. We then learnt a “sitting dance” with body percussion and actions, using our left and right side of our body at different times.
We played a game where we changed our bodies into various Australian animals, learning the different actions for each animal and listened to a song about the four different winds in the Torres Strait Region. Each wind has a different name and we listened to a song about the winds, Naigai (Northerly), Zay (Southerly), Sage (South easterly) and Kooki (Northwest). The song went like this:
The Four Winds Song
Sage Guba-nu (Sage wind is blowing)
Naigai Guba-nu (Naigai wind is blowing)
Zay Guba-nu (Zay wind is blowing)
Berehilia Mule-ma (We’re staying on Here HiIl)
Kooki guba-nu (Kooki wind is blowing)
Neville ended by telling us a Dreamtime story about an eagle who put its nest in the tree and how the waterways and marshes were created by the falling tree. 
We learnt to say goodbye – “Dijirigo“.
Evan: I liked playing the animal statue game and turning into all the different animals.
Elisa: I liked when we were in the circle singing about the wind.
Arlo: I loved playing the animal musical statues.
Zach: I liked playing the animal game and turning myself into an Emu.
Finn: I enjoyed everything that we did with Neville. It was so much fun
Josh: I liked turning into the animals and then melting to the ground after becoming that animal, then we got up and turned into a different animal.
The children have been exploring Aboriginal storytelling using symbols. They discussed ways in which Indigenous culture values storytelling. One way being using symbols to represent their ideas in their paintings. We looked at an artwork to demonstrate this. This activity stimulated their imaginations as well their ability to plan and sequence as they told a story with a beginning, middle and end. At activity time the symbols served as a provocation for the children to paint their own symbols for storytelling. Some blocks with symbols on them were provided and the children were invited to use them to make up and tell their own story.
Archie: My dad was driving the car. My sister was sitting in the front. I saw a rainbow, a kangaroo and I saw some rain.
Daisy: I was a girl and I saw a rainbow and then I went past a river. I saw a kangaroo. I went to a special place and then I saw an emu.
Abbey: There was a girl, my dad was driving me in the car and we drove to a special place. We then drove to a river. We saw some emus. We saw a rainbow and some kangaroos and some rain.
Etta: I went outside and I saw a girl. I saw an emu and a kangaroo. I went to a special place, and it started to rain and then came a rainbow.
The Dolphins have been exploring the song called True Blue Wonders. The song celebrates the beautiful country of Australia and features the awesome sounds of the didgeridoo (played by Norm Stanley) imitating Australian animals. The names of the Australian animals are sung in the Indigenous language.
The children learnt that ‘True Blue’ is a term to describe something or someone Australian and that ‘Down Under’ means Australia. True Blue Wonders includes four words in Indigenous language, Baru (crocodile), Yonga (kangaroo), Ngurran (dingo) and Koo-wark (kookaburra). They drew some of the animals in the song, using Aboriginal art as inspiration. They used beautiful pencils and oil pastels and added coloured sand to their pictures. They included literacy in this experience.
The image of Uluru in the video also prompted some discussion about sacred places and the children learnt that it is now forbidden to climb Uluru.
Care Packs
To date, we have collected 830 Care Packs from 21 schools and one corporate business. I am thrilled that we have surpassed my target of 600 care packs. This is an incredible effort and I am extremely grateful to everyone for their support of this worthwhile cause. The Care Packs have all been collected by Gunawirra and will be distributed to the children in the Pre-schools in outback NSW over the next few months.
