This is a Nepal in Motion post 🙂

We have started a new Nepal in Motion FB page to journal the learnings of our preparations for our trip to Nepal! We wanted to have a special family emblem as our profile pik on our Facebook Page…so that was our first Adventure Based Leaning task 🙂

Possible curriculum outcomes are at end of the post…but for us this is just an exciting start to our adventure…creating a symbol of our team, a sense of identity and belonging, a symbol we can recreate on our wall where we will hang all our maps and planning, a symbol we can print on a T-shirt down the track…NEVER get bogged down with the outcomes….they are an afterthought for reporting only…..DO WHAT IS FUN WITH YOUR KIDS, the outcomes come naturally whether you record them or not 🙂

Lucas got straight to work in a paint program on the ipad….doodling this rough draft of a potential emblem, our plane flying through the mountains!

Lucas told me that the mountains represented Nepal, that the plane (planes are his passion) represented our journey and the bridge represented our hike.  Awesome!  Lucas had set the foundation for what our emblem needed…. something to represent Nepal, something to represent us as a family team, and something to represent what we are doing on our journey…but the emblem needed to be a team effort encompassing our values as a whole.

So we brainstormed everything that came to mind when we thought of Nepal, and researched into a few symbols of Nepal.

We found that the Nepali flag is shaped like 2 triangles representing its mountains!  It’s red colour represents the national flower the rhododendron, and blue outline represents peace.  We thought we could include this in our emblem somehow.

We then brainstormed how we as a team would like to be represented in our emblem.  We want to be strong, help each other in our journey, and be gentle on the environment.  So we searched for ways that we could represent both Nepal and us on our journey.  Aurora found ‘chain links’ linked together, and thought that we could draw 4 of these on our emblem to represent our strong team, but she knew it just didn’t quite go with our hiking /Nepali elements.  She then found four hands linked together….getting better!  We then thought….what about 4 feet????

So our team (mostly Aurora this part :-)), using a combination of Microsoft Paint, Publisher and Word, designed and created an emblem like this…

The triangle represents the Himalayan mountains, coloured red to represent the national Rhododendren flower, outlined blue to represent peace. The four feet represent us as a family, walking around the mountain together, leaving only footprints. Aurora had the idea of integrating  the 4 natural elements, water, air, fire and earth into our feet…the energy forces bringing us together in life.  The Buddha eyes, which appear on so many Nepali temples, represent the fifth element, the spiritual journey we would like to achieve individually.

Next task to create a card version of this emblem for our wall display 🙂

Australian Curriculum links 

Designing an adventure family emblem can tick so many outcomes in the curriculum…Here is one from the Yr5/6 Visual Arts Curriculum:

Explain how visual arts conventions communicate meaning by comparing artworks from different social, cultural and historical contexts – analysing how symbolic meaning or metaphor is constructed in students’ own artworks and artworks of others.

But it also covers English (researching, discussing and comparing symbols), Design and Technology (using a variety of media tools to design and produce own emblem), Health (awareness of wellbeing and working as a team), SOSE (exploring cultural perspectives)…LOTE cultural outcomes….many learning outcomes 🙂  If you search the keywords of making such an emblem in the ACARA website, like symbol, team, identity, belonging, etc you will find the potential outcomes for your year level.

This activity also involved ‘Ethical Understanding’, ‘Personal and Social Capability’, ‘Intercultural Understanding’ and ‘Critical and Creative Thinking’, all part of the  ‘General Capabilities‘ section of the ACARA website.