Creating our hand painted flag

It’s not perfect, with little smudge marks and a black paint brush that went wayward, but it is ours! We, the Pre-Toddler group, have created this piece of art in recognition of Indigenous Australians.

It took a few weeks to put together, inviting each child to place their hand print on our community Aboriginal Flag.

We noticed the children reacted in many different ways as they experienced the different stages of creation.

Some children eagerly stepped forward and didn’t mind the tickle of the brush, or the cold sensation of the paint on their hands.

Others squished their hands up into tiny balls, like a sensory reflex and rubbed their fingers back and forth on the palm of their hand.

Some took more time to participate and leave their personal print, but generally as the children became more familiar with the calico material and paintbrushes, they presented their hands willingly for more prints.

We assisted the children and demonstrated the actions so they could learn from and follow our lead. We also helped them to place their hands as well.

While we were creating the flag, we spoke to each child about our creation, a flag that symbolises the unity and identity of Aboriginal People.

Their black hand prints represent the Aboriginal People of Australia.

Their yellow hand prints represent the sun; the giver of life and protector.

And, the red hand prints represent the red earth; the red ochre (a natural clay earth pigment) used in ceremonies and Aboriginal peoples’ spiritual relation to the land.

Our curriculum (and projects that form the curriculum) are always designed to be age appropriate here at Choklits Child Care Centre in Ringwood, Melbourne. We don’t expect children of Pre-Toddler age to fully understand the meaning of each colour, we are giving them exposure to different colours so they can begin identifying differences and develop the building blocks for further learning as they advance through the Choklits curriculum.

As you can see from the photos we had a great time putting this together. We had help from our Choklits Community getting this fabulous piece framed and the flag will now hang on our wall for the remainder of the year so we can refer back to it and build on our learnings.