The program guides students through the theme of the game and toys to their own games, to other children in the classroom and elsewhere in the world. Pupils this way they get to know their classmates and learn to deal with diversity. The program is based on active learning methods.
The basis is work in form, creative tasks and also work with text. Follow-up discussions play an important role, which enable pupils to formulate communication skills, the ability to express their opinions and improve turn to listen too.
We are based on the belief that it is impossible to understand another person and a different view of the world, if we don’t understand ourselves. Activities that will help students are therefore included in the beginning of the program to remember what they play with and played with. They explore what toys and games mean to them. In the subsequent creative parts are asked to think about how they would use seemingly uninteresting objects, such as a piece of string or a stick.
They can later compare their ideas with a short film in which children from Brazil, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Senegal and Uganda present some of their toys. Meanwhile, in partial through the activities, they will get to know the story of other toys and also the story of their creation, which they will apply especially in reflection
accompanied by the questions:
Who has the inherent ability to play?
What makes a toy a toy?
How value is related toys and its price?
Where does our vision of the world come from and what can it contribute to if we can look at the world different eyes?
The theme of toys, however, brings another dimension to the program that has not been discussed so far. Although they are objects nice, they make you smile and bring joy, the toy industry, where most toys come from today, he’s nowhere near as sweet and innocent. The toy industry is one of the strongest industries in the world.
An enormous amount of money flows through it and an unimaginable number of people participate in it. Game and toys also connect us in today’s world with people we don’t know and will probably never meet.
Nevertheless, we participate in their lives with our decisions, and they contribute to ours with their work.
The educational program does not directly focus on the issues of economic globalization, social inequality or poor working conditions in the production of toys. But by giving students non-violently through toy stories to see the world through their eyes, they also receive stimuli and information to reflect on how we come to objects of daily consumption, what we value in them and who or what we support by their production or purchase.
It is therefore a kind of preliminary step leading to sensitivity and conscious decision-making about their consumption. At the same time toy stories leave no one in doubt that it makes sense to be interested in people from other cultures, other countries, such a distant world. Yes, we may never meet them. At present, however, we are invisibly with them more connected than ever.
