This is a post i wrote a while ago about a beautiful little place that captured my heart- St Thomas Children's Home.
On the 28th of July, my OT class visited a Children's Home. We were all very excited as we arrived to a group of smiling children all ready to hug and love us. I have been exposed to orphanages before so this was nothing new to me but to someone who had never been before, i can imagine that it is quite a shock to see such happy smiling and loving faces especially in the oung children where their circumstances are so dire.
As a class we were split up into our prac groups and were all put in charge of running a group according to the different age groups in the home. My group got the "Daisies". My group decided that we would do an interactive activity as part of a warm up and incorporate music into it as music is an easy way to get the energy levels up. It was a group of about 12 children and there were about 8 students. This proved to be quite diffeicult because we did not have a proper structure- the children dd not know who to listen to. We epitomised the saying- "Too many cooks spoil the broth." However, this was a lesson learned.
Warm up: All the children and some OT students sat in a circle and passed a ball around the cirle while the music was playing. When the music stopped, the child that had the ball had to perform a certain action. Because these children are at the age where they should know their shapes and colours, this was incorporated into the warm up. ALso, some actions included making the sounds of some animals and picking a friend in the group to high five promoting decison making and socialisation amongst them.
The activity: We decided on a crat activity where music was involved as music was involved in our warm up activity. We collected toliet rolls and brought many craft items such as stickers, coloured paper and colorful pens. The children were to make their very own shakers. We allowed them the choice of whch item they would like to fill their shakers with according to the sounds that each made. This promoted decison making. They were then allowed the oppurtunity to decorate their shakers. We then played some music and the children shook their shakers.
Analysis: It was a fun activity and the delight on the children's faces was priceless. They were so proud to show off their creations often turning to the students to show us how well they had done. Children that seemed more reserved at the beginning came out of their shells as they created their shakers. The warm up and the activity went a lot faster than anticipated so we ran out of ideas towards the end. But luckily for us, we were all children once and we were able to think bcak to when we were young and the games that we played. I think the disorganisation on our part was evident but the children were just so happy that they were having fun, listening to music, interacting with one another that it didn't really matter at the end of the day.
It was a beautiful day had by all the students. I even felt that we became closer as a class as we all did something outside of varsity on a Saturday. When the whole class came together at the end in a circle we shared our experiences for the day and we saw that not only did we bring joy to the lives of the children, but they brought so much joy to our lives.
This vulnerable population of children is hert breaking to see. The home is a place of safety for these vulnerable children. When working with them for the day, I had to dettach my feelings of heartbreak.
It was a wonderful morning at he children's home. I learnt so much about the joy of play in the occupation of children.
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