The Corner
Parent’s Notes

What's on at The Corner:

Maiem December

2008 – April 2009

Maiem! This summer, a visit to The Corner will transport you to the Torres Strait. Dive for pearls, search for dugongs, swim with turtles or catch a fresh fish for tea. Join us every day of the week on a creative adventure with The Edge artsworker team – between 10am and 12 noon, there’s everything from percussion to VJing to storytelling. On Thursday morning, come along ready to sing in the ever-popular Rhyme Time. (In the Torres Strait,  Maiem means Welcome)

What is The Corner?

The State Library has created The Corner as a special space for children within its building at South Bank as well as online. The space is for children 8 years and under, their parents, educators and friends, to enjoy and experience first hand some of the amazing collections, services and programs available at the Library. The Corner features exhibitions from Dr. Barbara Piscitelli AM Children’s Art Archive, unique artworks, wonderful books, fun and educational toys and artist led activities.

With your support, children can explore this site and engage in a creative hands-on and minds-on experience of a digital exhibition, on-line games and reading activities.

The Corner journey

The journey, inspired by The Corner, provides an array of materials for you and your child to utilise in creative play. Children can build literacy skills, learn about their world and engage in self-expression through a number of creative forms.The Corner site provides a wonderful starting point for you to bring the world of The Corner, inspired by the theme, Maiem, to life. We encourage you to observe and support your child’s responses to the site, and the collections and activities within it, through their creative play (in role play, song, storytelling and/or visual representations).

Exhibition – Maiem

The Torres Strait is situated between the tip of Cape York and Papua New Guinea. There are hundreds of islands in the Torres Strait but only eighteen of these islands are inhabited. There are also two communities in the Northern Peninsula area.

The children who created the artworks in the exhibition live on Erub (one of the Eastern Islands) and Poruma (one of the Central Islands.)

Torres Strait Islander Life

The people of Torres Strait enjoy a life that is deeply connected to the natural environment. Children love playing outdoors and swimming in the ocean.

Weaving

Weaving is a traditional craft of the Torres Strait Islander people. Stunning work is created by weaving the leaves of the coconut palm. Torres Strait elder, Aunty Betha, has created these beautiful items shown below.

Try weaving at The Corner or at home. Fold one sheet of paper in half lengthways. Cut strips along the paper from the fold, stopping 2cm before the end of the sheet. Open the sheet of paper. Collect items for weaving –wool, fabric, paperbark, long grasses and paper will all work well. Weave the items over and under the strips to create your artwork. What else can you weave? Try cutting out other shapes to use for weaving.

Singing and Dancing

Singing and dancing are key parts of the traditional and contemporary cultural life of the Torres Strait Islander people. Torres Strait Islanders often sing in church. There are special island hymns with parts sung in Torres Strait language accompanied by the beat of the warup drum. Children are taught singing and dancing from an early age, with songs and dances performed at celebrations and events.

Fishing

Fishing is popular in the Torres Strait and a way for the Torres Strait Islander people to make a living. However, too many fishing licenses for the region have been given to people from other parts of Australia. This means that the area is being over fished. The Torres Strait is currently working to resolve these issues and ensure fisheries are managed in a sustainable way.

Try fishing at The Corner – take a reel out to the canoe and see if you can catch a coral trout!

Pearl Diving

Torres Strait Islanders traditionally used pearl shell for trading and making artefacts. By the late 1800’s, the pearling industry had exploded with the Torres Strait supplying over half the world’s pearl shell. Migrants flocked to the Torres Strait to find work. Pearl divers (including many Torres Strait Islanders) were exposed to terrible conditions and very dangerous work. The industry had a devastating impact on the Torres Strait Islander people, with their population declining by half just thirty years after the beginning of the industry.  Today there is only a small pearling industry in the Torres Strait.

Sea Creatures in the Torres Strait

Turtles

There are six types of marine turtles that live in the Torres Strait.  Turtles have always played a significant part in Torres Strait Islander culture. Traditionally, the turtle was hunted as a food source and still is today, although this is now managed carefully to make sure it is sustainable. On some islands, the turtle shell was used to make cultural masks.

Dugongs

Dugongs are large mammals that spend all their lives at sea. They have a similar tail to a whale but a unique head shape. They are slow, gentle animals and only have one baby at a time, called a calf. The calf will stay with the mother for a few years, swimming everywhere with her.  Dugongs live solely on seagrass and are sometimes known as sea cows. The biggest threat to the dugong is the loss of seagrass from pollution and climate change. Boat strikes also pose a great problem to the species. Like the turtle, the dugong was traditionally hunted by the Torres Strait Islander people. This continues today but the practice is controlled to help preserve this beautiful creature.

Can you see the dugongs and the turtles in the window at The Corner? Try cutting out your own dugong or turtle to put in your window at home.

The Torres Strait and Climate Change

The low lying islands of the Torres Strait are currently facing the real and immediate threat of climate change. Rising temperatures and sea levels could significantly alter island life by the end of this century, ultimately forcing up to half the inhabitants of the Torres Strait to relocate. Torres Strait Islanders have already witnessed unprecedented flooding, king tides, coral dying and the depletion of seagrass.

Give your child the opportunity to spend lots of time in the natural environment so they can form a deep connection with it  and respect for it. What habits can you change at home, kindy or school to lessen your impact on the environment? How can you cut your use of power? What can you reuse or recycle? Make a list of things that you don’t really need to buy in an effort to decrease waste.

Credits

About the exhibition

This digital exhibition features works of art by children from the Torres Strait, Australia. These original paintings and drawings are part of the Dr Barbara Piscitelli AM Children’s Art Archive in the John Oxley Library at the State Library of Queensland.

State Library thanks our creative collaborators

Reading

Learning to read is one of the most important skills we ever learn. Reading provides an endless source of personal pleasure and satisfaction as well as being the gateway to knowledge and learning. The reading process begins with talking and playing with babies from birth. Nurture the love of books and reading from an early age by:

The books detailed in the Maiem Booklist have been selected to support the Maiem exhibition and copies of the books are in The Corner. Choose stories from the booklist that match your child's age and interests (or let your child choose) and share the stories with them.

Read the stories in the Reading section of this website with your child. You may also like to look through your own bookcase or work with your local library to locate more books that encourage thinking about self concept and representation.

Exhibition - Colour

Children and Colour

Although contested many theorists believe that from birth babies can only see black and white, but at around six weeks to two months they begin to distinguish colour. Bright colours are the first that babies can perceive and small children are naturally attracted to bright hues. Exposing babies and toddlers to a wide variety of colours and extending their ‘experience’ of a particular colour helps to shape their future responses toward it - a negative response to a specific colour may simply be the result of unfamiliarity with that colour. Colour is an important identification and communication tool helping children ‘read’ their world - in fact colour association is one of the key ways young children learn the names of colours and objects (for example: a red apple, a yellow banana).

Making Colours

For thousands of years, people have been using colour to create art. Indigenous Australians used ochre for drawing and painting. In other parts of the world, everything from trees, beetles and squid have been used to make paints.

Experiment with paints at home. Invest in primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and black and white. Encourage children to mix their own colours for painting and see how many colours you can make!

Help children find colour in the natural world as stimulus for art making. Use clay or charcoal to make drawings or mulberries to make dye. Just make sure the materials are non-toxic.

A rainbow in your room

Hang a prism from a window at home. When a prism is hit by white light (sunlight) the light bends and splits into bands of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

Colourful language

Colours have strong emotive and associative qualities. Blue is considered a calming colour while red is sometimes connected with anger. We use colour terms in language to convey different feelings, for example I’m feeling blue or I was seeing red. Many idioms or expressions use colour to convey their meaning. Some expressions we have focused on in The Corner are:

Beware the Green Eyed Monster
Paint the Town Red
The Black Sheep

Talk to your child about the meaning of these expressions and have a go at making up your own!

Read books that explore colour and its meaning such as: ‘Where is the Green Sheep’ written by Mem Fox and illustrated by Judy Horacek, ‘Kun-Man-Gur: the rainbow serpent’ written by James Cowan & illustrated by Bronwyn Bancroft and ‘What colour is your world’ by Bob Gill.

Credits

About the exhibition

This digital exhibition features works of art by children from Australasia. These original paintings and drawings are part of the Dr Barbara Piscitelli AM Children’s Art Archive in the John Oxley Library at the State Library of Queensland.

State Library thanks our creative collaborators

Exhibition - The Shed

‘From farm to factory to artist's studio, the shed has come to be treasured as a palace of everyday creativity. It's the place where problems are solved and communities built. More than ever, the answer’s in our own backyard.’ 1

The Shed is a place of imagination, invention, self sufficiency and wonder. At The Shed children can create a new invention from everyday objects, tend to the garden or feed the chooks. The Shed is a celebration of the everyday; of our environment and the good people in it.

What can I invent?

Australian inventions are everywhere. From the boomerang to the bionic ear, Australians have been at the forefront of world discovery. Everyday, children make new discoveries about their world. Children perceive the world around them through new and creative eyes and are naturally curious about their surroundings. From the materials available to them, they can create new objects and invent new uses for old ones.

Encourage children to think creatively. What can that object be used for? What can you make?

What can I grow?

Children have an innate affinity with nature and a strong sensory response to the natural world. Children’s early experiences of the natural environment contribute toward the development of creativity and the imagination in addition to their fine and gross motor skills.

Give your child the opportunity to fossick outdoors or the time and space to contemplate it.

Expose your child to different varieties of plants – talk about their name, texture, colour and smell.

Make a herb garden on the windowsill, plant vegetables, or attract wildlife to your home by growing native plants. Use nature as inspiration for art making activities in The Corner and at home.

Credits

About the exhibition

This digital exhibition features 7 works of art by children from Australasia. These original paintings and drawings are part of the Dr Barbara Piscitelli AM Children’s Art Archive in the John Oxley Library at the State Library of Queensland.

The Shed Creative team

Exhibition - Me

'All children have the right to an identity. This includes the right to a name, a nationality and a family.'
Convention on the Rights of the Child
November 1989

Children develop a sense of their own identity through their relationships with others and their social and cultural contexts. A strong sense of identity is vital to general well-being and to being a secure, tolerant and resilient person.

Children develop a positive sense of self through feeling valued and accepted by the significant people in their lives. Children whose thoughts and ideas are respected and listened to, who are encouraged in creative play, and challenged and involved in activities will feel good about themselves and where they belong.

Who Am I?

Where do I come from? Where do I belong?

Look at your face in the mirror – What do you look like? What colour hair do you have? What colour eyes? What colour skin? What sort of nose do you have? Draw or paint your self portrait.

What is important to Me?

We define ourselves by what we value, or what we think is important.

Write a story about someone or something that is important to you. This story could be made up of words, or pictures, or both.

How do I express who I am?

Just 10 weeks after conception, babies in the womb begin to show signs of self expression. How do we show who we are? Is it through our clothes, our personality, what we value or how we engage with other people?

Choose a costume and try it on… How does it make you feel? Does it change the way you walk or talk? Do you feel like yourself or someone else?

Exhibition - Children and Special Places

Special places are everywhere. A special place might be in the outdoors, the city, in outer space or even underneath the kitchen table.

Children have an inherent affinity with the natural world. A child’s special place is often in nature and close to home – at the beach, the bush, or in the front garden.

From a very early age, children develop strong emotional responses to particular environments or places. All children need special places where they feel safe and secure and can be themselves.

Exhibition – Play

This exhibition features 16 works by children from Vietnam. The works were made in 1993, and feature the play lives of children from urban and rural areas. The original art works are part of the Dr Barbara Piscitelli AM Children’s Art Archive in the John Oxley Library at the State Library of Queensland.

Activities to extend your experience of the Exhibition Play

Why Play? Children and play: a natural combination

All over the world, children play at home, in the outdoors and in fantastic places with different kinds of materials.

When children play, they learn about themselves and the world. They find out what they can do with people and objects. Through playful investigations, children figure out how the world works.

When children play, they use imagination – one of our greatest human resources.

Tell a story

Where do you play: inside the house, out in the garden, at the park, on the beach?
Who do you play with: with friends and family, or by yourself?
What do you do: create things, use your imagination, or participate in games?
How do you feel when you play?

Work with your child to write and/or tell a story about you when they are playing.

… Games and Activities

Work with your child to complete their own representation of play through drawing.

Ask your child some prompt questions about play, including:
Where do you play: inside the house, out in the garden, at the park, on the beach?
Who do you play with: with friends and family, or by yourself?
What do you do: create things, use your imagination, or participate in games?
How do you feel when you play?

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