Mercy Family • group • Dublin

Group Category   •  2024
Our Pumkin Patch Our Project is inspired by the end of a season and Halloween celebrations ‘Oiche Shamhna’ and the move from Autumn into Winter and what they experience and see around them. The context of the ideas came from the traditions of coming together in a celebration of different things the children are excited about at this time of year. Halloween and end of Autunm into Winter and what they see that is changing in nature and connecting it to the celebration of Halloween and creating excitement and context for them in what they are exploring in school and using their imagination to bring these thoughts they have to life and help them to connect into their imagination helping them to connect with their imagination and for themselves and what is this word imagination. To do this project we brought the group together to brain storm, what they think the word imagination means to them. We had to explain brainstorm and imagination which was interesting to explore the word with the group so that the children could reflect on this word to connect it to themselves within their own thinking. As they spoke in the brainstorm and brought words in the context of the theme in preparation it brought them together and motivated the children to come together and become excited and connect with their individual creativity and integrate their thoughts together to be able to feel confident to express their imagination and ideas they had inside themselves and use this as a way of experiencing connection and working together in a group. The imagination was a word but the project helped each of the children to find their own imagination that is individual to themselves and allow them to connect this idea and this word with themselves and each other finding interest in each other’s ideas and inspiring each other supporting each other and healthy competition that sparked their motivations. The children were able to connect in language a word imagination and what this word meant and to realise they all have imagination that can bring to them ideas. Everyone has an imagination and this was something special to each of them and it is special because we can use our imagination to create things. In this experience the project came alive and the children created what they called ‘in imagination land we made ‘Our Pumkin Patch’ which in the moment was a real world a real place and they were together in this place adding things placing things and using different materials in different ways and building something together while bringing their own individual imagination and creativity into the project and through the experience they were able to connect into their imagination and experience a confidence in themselves in the process. It was a wonderful opportunity to do a group project and through the experience their imaginations came alive and they connected with the word and their imagination and how to use their imagination to create things. https://youtu.be/__295SjbqrU