The five-day interactive Hindu Young World Summer Smart camp held last week covered a host of activities ranging from art and theatre to quiz and robotics. The art workshop, one of the first in the five-day camp, got the kids to look at art and design from a whole new perspective. The activities assigned weren’t the typical ‘paint and sketches’ art class assignments. Children got to explore and learn about design, art and artists. Children were asked to design chairs for either school students or elderly people, which required them to reason and think like designers. In their next activity, they were taught how to identify symbolism in a self portrait and draw their own self portraits as well as illustrate symbolic moments from their own life.
“We’ve learnt a lot of new and easy techniques in art and design and also about many important personalities in the field,” says Artha Anil, one of the students.
Like the art classes, the quiz and the Know Your English workshops also got children to rack their brains and have loads of fun while learning a million different things. The workshop wasn’t only about answering questions and spelling words right, but also encouraged kids to share information. “Summer camps are meant to be fun, and so we tried making the quiz and Know Your English workshop as interactive and fun as possible to get the children to participate, learn and enjoy themselves thoroughly. This is not a competition!” says one of the teachers.
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The dramatics workshop introduced children to various tricks and techniques of the trade, so that the next time they are on stage, they will know how to do it right.
While the teachers gave children freedom in terms of ideas and performance, they never failed to correct and teach them right from wrong, as and when required. The drama workshop seems to have been a favourite among most children as they felt the teachers were very ‘friendly and interactive’.
The robotics workshop, though a little dull at first in the theory segment, picked up pace when the time came to work on the setting up of a robotic machine. Working with screwdrivers, batteries and circuits got the children excited and engrossed.
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All the workshops proved to be similar in one aspect — they encouraged students to speak up and didn’t only concentrate on what they wanted to teach the children. The teachers too seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed the camp, and stated that they, in turn, learnt quite a lot from the children during the five days they spent with them.