Last week I drove to Lower Austria to visit a school called “Erlebnisschule” situated in Marie Enzersdorf. It was a great experience introducing the Atlantic Rainforest project to the Austrian kids. My visit included a lecture about Brazil and the Atlantic Rainforest, as well as playing with kids and draw paintings.
The kids knew already a bit about the project and the intention behind it as I’ve sent a postcard from Brazil to them. We divided the kids in two groups according to their age.
It was awesome to see how ambitious the kids are, how interested they were in learning some things about the Atlantic Rainforest and its problems . Also they were very excited about the pictures of the everyday life in Brazil and how much effort they’ve put in every drawing they did for the kids in Brazil. I’ve spent about 2 hours with each group. First we did some games and I tried to introduce them to the topic. We did a listening game about the sounds of the rainforest and searched for Brazil and Austria on the miniature globe. Each child got one picture which showed the everyday life in Brazil including the rainforest, animals, kids playing football, the ocean, local plants and the deforestation.
Every child got a drawing from a Brazilian child and then we started the so called “response-drawing” .
The goal of the “response-drawing” is that every Austrian child draws a painting for a Brazilian child and vice versa.
At the end I got lots of beautiful and amazing drawings about the everyday life in Austria which I will send to the Brazilian kids in Itacarè. The kids from the Erlebnisschule are already very excited to get another set of response drawings back from the Brazilian kids after they’ve received theirs..
Together with the kids I had an amazing time and we had a great learning experience that was informative and fun at the same time.
Special thanks to Irene, one of the teachers at the Erlebnisschule who was my contact person and a great and very helpful coordinator and to my friend Khantu, who introduced me to the Erlebnisschule and got the whole collaboration started. BIG THANKS Khantu!!!