Our session was about Difference between boys and girls, man and woman
We started the session with a small stimulation. Children were asked to pick a pista shells. All of them picked hand full…. A basket was labeled as Tween Café’s thoughts…They were asked to imagine the pista shells as the different thoughts and ideas that each of them had… As each thought/idea that they shared in the session today, we would mark it by putting a pista shell in the collective basket….Once children were told this – they wanted to reduce the number of shells they picked….
We started the topic through mind map with the idea of Boys/Girls/Man/Women – what they think are the differences between BOYS/GIRLS OR MAN/WOMEN
They said there aren’t many differences…The first thought was about the appearance…Appearance in terms of hair…In terms of how girls generally have long hair and boys short…Immediately the thoughts were on that it’s again individual…some might like to keep it short and some might want to keep it long irrespective of gender….They next moved on to clothing…Clothing for women is different men is different but all could wear all…like jeans girls wear…just that we don’t see too many boys wearing saree but they can wear…It was interesting the way it was evolving….They spoke about clothing being different for privates…. Hence that is one difference… That made them speak about body organs…Women have ovaries…Women can bear children…Reproductive organs…while the discussions were on…they had many things in common …hence we made one branch of a mind map as common – what is common between these genders… loads of thoughts…
Soon the basket was getting filled with shells….thoughts and lots of things to share & discuss… As you see the mind map evolved… In some temples we see discrimination…some marriage rituals like women wearing thali and not men…some transportation spaces like we see more men driving trucks than women…. But it is not difference they pointed out… women can also do… sports is one place we see they all play the same sport but not together except for badminton and tennis… art…jewellery….customs…
Children said they exhausted all their ideas and it was the time to count the shells – we had 105 pista shells in the basket….….They were enthusiastic to count to see if I have noted all…the number should be the same you see…it was 95… Aunty missed writing/noting 10…
At this point in time children looked aware of the few differences that we might find between the genders and that most of the things are common…that was all about a session with Nimmi at Tween club