mural one, stage one: World Map
My colleagues and I decided to orient the kids to murals by first painting one in our classroom. We run an after school program and summer programs out of this room for the the refugee youth. It is also used by newly arrived adults (often the parents of the kids we work with) who are learning English and getting oriented to the very foreign ways of the United States!
Here are some pictures of this process. It was exciting to see the kids go from hesitant and doubtful of their skill to excited, knowledgeable and proud of their work. Many of the children could not identify where on the planet their country of origin is. By the end, kids were confidently identifying not only such home nations as Iraq, Bhutan, DRC and Congo Brazzaville, but also the countries in their general regions and other places as well. So much fun!
The next stage will be adding a border and designs throughout the mural, depicting the homelands and interests of the kids. That process will be determined by the kids. We chose to project the Peter's World Map on the wall as the structure: it is a more accurate depiction of our planet, putting aside the Eurocentric view of the world that is our standard world map structure. If you are interested in reading more about this map, go to www.petersmap.com/.
Here are some pictures of this process. It was exciting to see the kids go from hesitant and doubtful of their skill to excited, knowledgeable and proud of their work. Many of the children could not identify where on the planet their country of origin is. By the end, kids were confidently identifying not only such home nations as Iraq, Bhutan, DRC and Congo Brazzaville, but also the countries in their general regions and other places as well. So much fun!
The next stage will be adding a border and designs throughout the mural, depicting the homelands and interests of the kids. That process will be determined by the kids. We chose to project the Peter's World Map on the wall as the structure: it is a more accurate depiction of our planet, putting aside the Eurocentric view of the world that is our standard world map structure. If you are interested in reading more about this map, go to www.petersmap.com/.
Kudos. I like the blue gradient background and how colorful the mural is. They are doing a great job on their first mural.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I have ever heard of Peter's World Map before. Good choice.