Each year, on the 26th January Australia Day is marked. It seemed like a good opportunity to learn a little more about this truly unique country so I hosted an ‘Australia Day’ themed meet up for the children and their friends.
Format of the Day
The meet up that I arrange are usually two hours long. I find this is just enough time to get through enough ‘stuff’ and it is enough time for the children to focus on the activities.
I did this one slightly different to usual, but I think it worked.
I did three distinct activities to cover the geography, the animals and aboriginal art and culture.
Geography of Australia
First, I did a little bit of talking about Australia; we talked about its land and population size in relation to the UK. We looked at the flag and talked about what the different things on the flag meant.
I gave a brief overview of why Australia Day is marked (and we talked about why the Aborigines may call it Invasion Day instead).
We then split into two groups for a geography activity which was to piece together the map of Australia and then locate some key cities.
We then came together and we started with placing the seas around Australia before marking on the cities in their correct places. We talked about the reasons for the location of major cities around the coast as well as predominantly in the East.
The resources I used for this section were:
- Raise the Flag Book for information on Australia flag
- This powerpoint from Twinkl about Australia Day
- This map (the plan version without cities marked) on.
Animals of Australia
Australia has lots of unique animals so we talked about those that are very recognisable such as koalas and kangaroos. I had taken some images of other Australian animals and gave the children these and they were to match up with the correct names (again split into two teams).
We then came together to see how many they got correct.
This is the resource that I created for this. I cut the animals and names out for each team and mixed them up for them to then match together.
Aboriginal Culture
After the animal matching game (and some healthy competition between the two teams) I had a much quieter activity planned. We had talked about the Aborigine people at the beginning and I wanted to tell the children more about the dreaming stories. I talked them through the dreaming stories then read one out loud to them (I chose the Rainbow Serpent for this).
We then watched a short YouTube clip of some aborigines telling a little bit more about the dreaming stories as well as telling a version of the rainbow serpent.
After the clip had finished we had a chat about why they might use song and symbols to re-tell their stories and had a look at some of the symbols that are used.
We then had a go at some Aboriginal inspired art using dots and the symbols to decorate a boomerang to tell a story.
The children then came together where they then told their story through the symbols or I interpreted it for them
The resources I used for this were:
- Dreaming information from Twinkl
- Dreaming story from this pack – the Rainbow Serpent was the one I used
- YouTube video about the Dreamtime
- Boomerang template
- Aboriginal Dot Painting
- Aboriginal Symbols Key
I think this worked well with a good mix of hands-on activities and teamwork to solve problems. I was a little short on time preparing this session, so it didn’t include as much craft activity as I would usually have liked to add-in.
That sounds fab.