Hello everybody! Today I am going to talk about another Memory Box workshop activity, “RIVER OF LIFE”. The discussion will include what the objectives are and how we aim to achieve them (with acknowledgements to Sinomlando, Philipe Denis, and Dominique Mamet).
Objective: The facilitators help the children to become aware of the changes which have affected their lives and help them to make sense of these changes, without minimising the pains and disruptions they have gone through.
Task: Drawing and presenting rivers of life.
Method:
1. Introducing the theme
The facilitators tell the children that the topic of the session is the river of life. The river of life describes the succession of events which have marked the lives of the children (e.g. pregnancy of the mother, birth, baptism, first day at school, a trip to town, visit of the father, sickness and death of the mother, move to the grandmother’s place). By way of example, the facilitator leading the exercise shows that he/she also has a river of life.
2. River of life
The facilitators distribute papers and crayons to the children. The children are invited to draw a river showing all the major events of their lives. Alternatively they can draw a series of boxes in which they draw significant events of their lives.
3. Group sharing
The facilitators invite the children to comment, one by one, on their rivers of life, explaining all the significant events which have marked their lives. The facilitators record each child’s story on paper and at the end of the exercise the children paste their stories into their Hero Books.
By the end of this session the children should be able to identify the significant events of their lives and to arrange them chronologically.
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MEMORY BOX – blog nr.15 will introduce another staff member, Thabile Jwara, from the Children’s Team… keep reading!
Best regards,
Fiona Mennell
Ps. Have you told all your friends and family about this project?
