SAIIER 2021:Auroville Rainbow Child

Creative Movement		Auroville Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)
Entity::Auroville Rainbow Child by Gala

The aim of this program is to help Auroville children to learn to be more focused and concentrated; for the children to be able to go in depth to learn a vast area in Yoga and Arts & Crafts to self discover themselves.

Description of project:

Around 16 children from different schools and kindergartens, ages 5 to 13, participated regularly in Rainbow Child classes. The classes were held by Gala and included activities in Hatha Yoga, Energetic Games and Arts & Crafts. Classes were held in Pitanga on Saturdays.

This year due to Covid-19 restrictions the children’s classes started later than usual and the number of children was restricted (our classes had the maximum allowed).

In yoga class we continued to work with Asanas and Pranayama. We added more new Asanas and Pranayama for children to learn and develop themselves.

In Energetic Games we mostly focused on development of memory and learned how to deeply concentrate on specific aspects. This helps the children in life and study.

We played various games such as “Rhythm game” (concentration and learning about rhythm), “Spy Game” (training memory and expanding thinking capacity), “Upside Down” (children learned to transform negative thoughts to positive thoughts) and working with crystals (learning how to feel energy and working with oneself).

We decided this year to continue to work deeper on the aspect of emotions, especially impatience, anger and frustration. We also added one more emotion – fear – as I felt these feelings were important to work on to manage in life especially this year.

In Arts & Crafts all children (mostly smaller aged boys) worked with Looming. They worked with Loom Bands in various colors and designs. By using small fine motor skills work, mathematics calculations and working with color each child managed to calm their nervous system.

This year I invited Karin, who is a designer of soft toys. She worked in small groups and managed to work with all the children who wanted throughout the year to complete a toy or a few soft toys. The children manage to gain patience and be cautious while working with a needle and color traits. They learned about different tastes in designing and how to use different materials to stitch soft toys with the help of Karin.

We also continued to use glue guns and various flower decorations for older students to make hair clip designs (for parents and friends), for them to develop ideas and learn to be more creative. By using the glue gun they learned to be responsible with equipment.

This year I developed a new technique using watercolor pencils and watercolor in tubes to paint on canvas boards. I adjusted this technique so that even small children can learn this technique with ease, and the final paintings look like professional artist paintings. Additionally we discovered a new technique using fluid acrylic in combination with watercolor pencil, sticking a drawing or photo on center of the board and filling around the picture with fluid paint in various ways (blowing and floating) to overlap the picture and make a depth illusion of the picture. Completing this new project, children started to easily orientate and feel the close-by space around them much better, and not fearing to mess up their work. We find this work very meditative and children really liked to work with fluid colors in different ways.

Outcomes:

With adding the new techniques, games and working with additional emotions the children managed to direct themselves in the direction of understating themselves, communicating without being negative and coping with life in general.

This reflected children being more positive, kinder to themselves and each other and by overcoming fear it made them more joyful and happy in life.

While working with Karin the children learned new skills and understood that with simple material they learned the feeling of creation and that they can achieve more than they thought they could in life.

Reflections:

This year was successful even though the classes started later, therefore we requested a reduced budget from SAIIER for the second half of the year. This year was especially successful with working with emotions and overcoming fear in life. I was glad that children were still interested in arts and crafts. They have enjoyed working with the new helper Karin.

Conclusion:

In the beginning of the next school year in July 2021 hopefully, we will together with the children decide with which emotions and aspects of arts and through which various ways of working with energy through games, we will work throughout the new school year.

Our last year’s aim to add more classes throughout the week has sadly not worked out for various factors, and we continue only with Saturday classes.

We will be working with a small group of children during summer (2 times per week, 2 hours extra during the month of May 2021) who want to learn specific areas in arts.

If Covid-19 restrictions continue and there is a limit in the number of children sharing the space, we will keep the classes small. We still would like to request help for expanding and adding new classes for the full year. With this we will be able to divide the older and younger kids in different classes, as with that we will be able to work on a deeper level and develop children's needs depending on their age.