Explore & Develop Penrith South NAIDOC – Thursday

Today one of Explore & Develops friends Uncle Perry came to visit the Grasshopper children. Uncle Perry is a an Aboriginal artist, dancer and knowledge holder and regularly visits our pre schoolers throughout the year. When Uncle Perry came to visit he was painted up which provoked a lot of questions and discussion amongst the children.

‘Why is his hair white?’

‘I went to the show and got my face painted but not like that. Why is his face painted like that?’

‘Why does he have lines on his arms?

Question after question came flowing in from our Grasshoppers today.

Do you know why Aboriginal people paint their bodies the way they do?

We didn’t, but that only meant that it was time to do some more research, and by now you should know how much we love to research things! 

Information flooded in from every direction and we ended up with an information overload so we went back to square one and researched ‘Aboriginal Body art’, which led us to some interesting facts.

Traditionally Aboriginal people used body art during their hunting, smoking, and other types of ceremonies. Each symbol and decoration on the body represents their nation and community.

Now that we had satisfied the children’s curiosity we could commence our collaborative painting experience with with Uncle Perry. We each took turns adding our finger prints to the Grasshopper on the canvas, which had been painted and designed by Uncle Perry especially for the pre-schoolers.

Caitlin & Emily