Years 3/4 and 5/6 joined together for the introduction day at Brent Knoll School.

Amoafi started the day with a Ghanaian call and response game featuring words from different languages mixed together to make a rhythmic cycle. The cycle is repeated in a call and response manner by the leader who stands in the middle of the circle. Players take it in turn to be leader when the current leader stands behind someone after three or four cycles.

Cycle
Tse tse kule
Tse tse kofisa
Kofisalanga
Katakyi langa
Kum adenne

Pronunciation
tse=che and kule=coolay


....ky=che
kum=coom

After this Sheila showed some of the African Worlds handling collection from the Horniman Museum. First of all pupils tried on garments from Africa and then they learnt about and played the musical instruments.

Amoafi is a story-teller and musician from West Africa and so the pupils were able to hear her give a performance on the talking drum and hear a story before lunch. The story was called The Magic Herdsboy, Chinamakuete from Shona, Zimbabwe and featured a song which the pupils and teachers all joined in singing at the end. You should be able to hear this song being played.

(Chorus all together)
Zamnde ra de ra (x 4)

(Solo with chorus x 4)
Zamnde ande ande a we
Zamnde ra de ra
Zamnde ande ande a we
Zamnde ra de ra

(Chorus all together)
Zamnde ra de ra (x 4)

After lunch Jacqui showed the two classes the Inspiration Africa! website which was projected onto a screen in their classroom. The pupils looked at the introduction days from previous projects and also some of the art outcomes.

They were also interested to see a Shona headest in the virtual library as before lunch some pupils had seen and tried out a headrest from the handling collection (see page 1). Finally, pupils were able to see pictures of what they would be doing for the rest of the afternoon - screen printing with Tony.

First of all Tony talked about the screen printing tools - screen, squeegee and inks - and then he demonstrated the process. The pupils then drew and cut out their introductory day banner shapes and started printing.

When they had taken their turn to screen print, pupils were able to sketch some of the musical instruments and other objects from the handling collection. These drawings were all very impressive as the classes were already experienced in using charcoal and creating effects. Roll your mouse over the right-hand image below to see more.

At the end of the day the banner was finished and everyone posed in front of the camera for the group classroom picture.