Healing the Land Culture: Schools

Culture: Schools

The 2006 Franklin County, PA Migrant Education Program

Week Five:

The theme was the African Savannah. We decided to focus on tribal forms of communication on the Savannah…primarily through using the talking drum. We brought a wide variety of different types of drums and demonstrated them to the students. We talked about making different sounds on the drums and how that can be used as a form of communication. We then had the students make their own drums. After they finished decorating them, we had them sit in a circle with us where we handed each a word and challenged them to “communicate” that word to everyone else just using the drum. Everyone took a turn.

We then had a drum circle where we established a basic drum rhythm and had the students join in with us. We ended our time with a game the students came up with where I would play and they would play along. When I stopped, they had to stop as well. If they didn’t stop at the same time, they had to move out of the drum circle. After trying to trick them over and over again (they were very good at this), there were three remaining. We had a lot of fun with it.

One of the students with his drum.

Week One | Week Two | Week Three | Week Four | Week Five

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