Day 1 with Year 5 began with introductions using rhythmic name games which was followed by Viv showing a range of different masks, fabrics and musical instruments from the Horniman Museum's handling collection.

After this Ayo, a drummer and story-teller from Nigeria, introduced the children to the talking drum, explaining the phonetic nature of the Yoruba languages and its 3 pitches - low, middle and high. Using his name as an example, he played it on the talking drum.

He then introduced his Jembe drum and explained the importance of the cowbell in maintaining the main rhythm - changing it when required. The class learnt a call and response song and heard about it's history by way of a story.

Next Viv introduced a session where the children worked in pairs writing stories around particular objects from the handling collection. Using their imaginations they named the object, wrote about how it might have been made and how it made it's trip to England.

Some of the pupils read their wonderful stories out aloud. If you would like to read a selection, please click on one of the buttons below.

Finally before lunch Ayo talked about the importance of names in Nigeria, his own name means "Joy comes to me" and he explained why he was called this.

He then told the story of the Tortoise and the Elephant. Stories in Nigeria are used to teach children about life and each have many meanings. At the end of the story Year 5 guessed what this one was about:

"Don't pay too much attention to strangers", "Even if you are very small you can achieve great things", "Pride comes before a fall".
They then talked about PRIDE and how it can have both negative and positive aspects.

On to the afternoon -->