Last Tuesday we had a special visit: a group of 4th year students of a school of Alcalá de Henares came to the university or better said, to Arabia and they spent time with the characters of Aladdin’s movie.
We were divided into six groups around the corridors of the principal building. Each group was decorated in a different scenario of Aladdin’s movie. Like the market, the Cave of Wonders, the dessert, the palace… if you were walking you could see some Aladdin, Jasmines, tigers, Jaffars or Genies running with flying carpets, magic lamps and all kind of things from the Arabian culture.
When the children came to my group scenario, called “The Secrets of Arabia”, they had to stay in front of the classroom door, touch the magic lamp and wait until the Genie comes and he give them 3 wishes. The Genie gave them money to buy things in Arabia, a way of transport, which is the flying carpet, and a turban to start the tour.
The first thing they could see was the market where Aladdin and his monkey Abu were waiting for them to teach them how to buy. Pupils could buy typical jewelry, fruit (apples, dates, and bananas), bread, tea or vessels. After the market, kids went to the palace were Jaffar was waiting for them. He taught them Arabian rules from the film trough activities and poetry. One rule was “Don’t steal or they will cut your hands” and another one was “The princess only has to marry a prince”. Then, they went to the palace garden where the princess Jasmine was dancing. She played some Arabic music and taught students how to do it following the instructions of a video. Children liked it and both, girls and boys, enjoyed this corner and danced together. The Genie was with the pupils during the whole tour helping them if they had any problem to speak English or if they didn’t understand something. Every time that the students finished a corner and they had to change to other one, the characters of those corners joined them to the next one, so at the end we were all together dancing and having fun. Finally, we gave them a bracelet as a little present from Arabia to make them remember this day and how great it was.
Personally, I liked very much the workshop and doing the performance with children instead of do it with our classmates but I also have to say that it was very exhausted but it was worth it.
Hi Lidia, I´m Jaime and I have just read your post. I have to say that I really liked the experience of doing Aladdin’s activity with children as well.
After thinking about this kind of activities with children I realized that this shouldn´t be an unusual day that only happens once a year.
In my opinion most of the presentations that we do in the university in front of our classmates, but are thought for children should be done with children. The reason why I think that is because if it were this way, we wouldn´t be nervous when we do this activities in front of children and we would be much more prepared for the teaching practice period.
Nevertheless, I also know that the situation that I’m writing about is a little bit utopic because children can´t be going every day to our university and that they have plenty of things to do at school.
So let´s think about it as a proposal for the future
Hi Lidia!! I am Alvaro and I have just read your post like Jaime has done before.
I am completely agree with Jaime that this have not to be an unusual day of the year that teachers in the school make this for their children. It is true that they have to do many things along the year, but as a teacher we have to apply this method to work sometimes in some areas to make easer and fun to learn.
As Jaime said in his comment I wrote in one of my comment that we should represent this kind of work always with children to be more comfortable, not to wait until the fourth year to make a performance for the children, because sometimes when we done some works for the university we don’t really know if it is going to work at the end with the children.
Lydia, I saw that you enjoyed too much and I am sure that the children liked your workshops; I think that your group make a nice market and all I have to say is CONGRATULATIONS GOOD JOB!
Álvaro Saz
Lidia, you did a great job in the workshop. Congrats. I’m also happy to see you appreciate the effort needed to organise an activity like this one. As you already know, it is not easy, but it is always worth it.