So our first Interactive game with the children today was doing collages. Kakak had told us not to leave the children with scissors so earlier that morning we cut our prepared materials for them beforehand.
Cutting in progress.
Amira was in charged of conducting this session, while the rest of the facilitators (xxx, xx, and xxx) facilitates the game. There were 3 types of craft to be done, first was coloring a pizza, second one was to cut and paste some stickers to form a picture of a garden, and the third one was to create a big collage of any shape the children like. The children were distributed into 4 groups, according to their own preference because apparently our usual way of random distribution doesn't work on them, they need to stick with somebody they feel comfortable with. Zi ying and I were facilitating the same group, while xxx and xxx ____.
There were 4 children in me and Zi Ying's group. They are all girls, all of them are already 17 years old and above. They are quiet and obedient so it wasn't really hard for me and Zi Ying to guide them. Nonetheless this is our very first time of interacting with mentally challenged children, we didn't know how to approach them to make them feel comfortable interacting with us. My usual way of bridging the gap with someone unfamiliar was to just have some light conversation, so I guess maybe I could try it. I mean, how different are they from us, they could definitely still communicate right.
And so I asked them about their daily routine, like what time they wake up everyday, what do they do everyday, do they usually have youth volunteers like us and etc. Lisa was the relatively smarter one among the four of them. She could give me clear information like there are universities students coming here from time to time. She tried to mention some university names, one of them was University Malaysia which I assumed she meant University of Malaya. (Kakak told us before that we had seniors doing social engagement here too) What caused me to feel a little bit embarrassed was when I was told that they wake up at 6am everyday. I asked Lisa if they just wake up naturally at this time or somebody wakes them up.
"Of course we woke up by ourselves, why do we need to be waken up?" Lisa asked me back with utterly innocent and bewildered tone.
Well, you would never know that we university students are a special kind of species that some of us would even fail to wake up with 10 alarms ringing together at once. Right here right now I wanted my life to be as simple as theirs so badly.
So coloring the pizza wasn't hard, except that one member in my group was not socialable that she took one whole piece of the paper to be colored by herself only and the rest of the group members are forced to share another one. Zi Ying and I did not help them at all with the coloring since they already knew how to do it, and the outcome was a pleasant one. each and every one of the children had produced uniquely beautiful masterpieces.
Well, who said pizzas can only be brown/orange/yellow/golden in color?
Second life lesson that the kids taught us: Never limit your innovation by stereotypes and orthodox.As for cutting and pasting the garden, it wasn't hard too, because Zi Ying and me cut the stickers out for them beforehand. Again, the children didn't care about the trees floating in the air, or the flowers being pasted upside-down. The garden that they produced were amusingly wonderful. It might not make so much logical sense to us limited-minded grown ups, but it was definitely peculiarly pleasant to our eyes. It somehow brought us a sense of freedom, to know that there are still people in this world that welcomes all kinds of possibilities.
The pizzas and the gardens up for evaluation. Notice how colorful it is. It's a beautiful mess!
Once the children were done with their masterpieces, they were instructed to paste their work in front as shown in the photo. Edan then conducted an evaluation session to have a close look at all their artworks. It was not a session for critiques or comments, but it was rather a session for sharing of how they came up with such colors and a session for encouraging and praising them for what they had done. The children's effort deserved appreciation and that was the primary drive to our evaluation session after each crafting session.
We were lucky enough to have McDonald's joining us in this good course, i.e. we got their sponsorship of 40 burgers and a big dispenser of orange drinks. Therefore our lunch that day was definitely a hearty one!
Super big tong of iced drinks sponsored by McD's. But we were warned not to prepare iced drinks for the children next time because it's not good for their health. We'd be more aware on this next time.
After lunch and prayers, we carried out the third task which is to do a big collage. The children had no specific request for any shape they like, so I said don't we make a collage of a flower (for our group). And it was an easy task too, each and every one of them had fun tearing and pasting the color papers onto the white mahjung paper.
Again, the different colors clashed beautifully into unique masterpieces. We were also lucky to have Dr Suria, our supervisor (Standing, second from right) to join us after lunch time.
We proceeded with the last interactive game later that afternoon, which is none other than the well-known Musical Chair! We were told by Kakak that the children had played this before with other volunteers too so we decided to let them have a second fun. The children definitely enjoyed this, and it was all controllable because the children didn't fight for the chairs aggressively (sometimes normal healthy children do that).
Let's go round and round around the chairs! Clap your hand along with the song! Look at Anis the musical chairs embassador of the day hahaha.
Oops who haven't gotten a chair?
Here's Amira babysitting Maya the 4-year-old child of one of the caretakers at IQ70+. Aww Maya looks tired after all the activities.
The facilitators having fun together with the children. We led them to go around the chairs but did not fight for the chairs with them.
And we called it a day at 4pm sharp because the children needed rest. Our Day 1 at IQ70+ is fruitful, meaningful and inspiring. It was magical, because it was our very first time interacting with such children. We were uncertain when we first started, we cracked our heads about how to approach them and interact with them, how to make the children understand our instruction in the simplest possible way. In fact we found ourselves feeling a little bit mentally exhausted after the first three hours being there. But finally we made through day 1 successfully! The children did not reject us, and we actually fostered some bonding with them. We had never felt so magical in all our lives, that we were actually able to color up the lives of some forgotten people in this society. In this city of lights, we strive to improve ourselves, but today, we are reminded to bring this small population of the society along with us on our journey of improving for a better tomorrow. What we did might seem insignificant and immaterial in this whole wide world, but we believe, as we go along, together we would make a significant change to this society in the end.
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