INTERNATIONAL MUD DAY

International Mud Day began in 2009 at a world Forum event, when two individuals passionate about the world, Gillian McAuliffe from Australia and Bishnu Bhatta from Nepal got together to spread awareness as to how we can be more sensitive and appreciative about the earth. This collaboration has resulted in the educators and all individuals round the globe to celebrate International Mud Day each year on 29th June. And so, we too at AIPS wanted to bring about the realization amongst our learners. We celebrated this event in the Sr. Berta Hall on our school campus. The learners were all excited to move to a new space and have an activity. The event began with our learner playing with a toy car on a mud track and how it moves on mud, this was in order for them to experience the feeling wet mud which they all thoroughly enjoyed it. Then our principal Sr. Gloria explained to our learners what is mud and its importance. A video clipping of a Marathi song ‘Kalya Matit Matit’ which displayed a man and a woman working on the fields and ploughing the soil for the crops to be grown well was shown to the learners. With this video we emphasized on the importance of soil/mud to grow crops and how they are essential for humans to survive. We then engaged out little learners by giving them mud to feel and smell, we then asked them questions like how did the mud feel? How does it smell? They all were very excited to experience all of it. We then showed the learners a video on pottery and how mud is used in a different way. Our learners were very intrigued by the whole process. We then showed them different items made out of clay mud like little pots, bottle, etc. Our learners were all amazed to see them as they felt that the items have come straight out of the screen. Our main activity for the day was to plant a carrom seed sapling in little pots of clay. Each learner received a clay pot with their name tag and the staff helped them plant the sapling. As our concluding activity we took hand prints of our learners with paint and mud on a paper. As the event was coming to an end Sr. Gloria showed them another use of mud that is Multani Mitti and they all moved to class with a dot of the face mask on the cheek.
Indeed it was so much of fun around experiencing the richness of mud in its varied forms.