18 February, 2012, Luang Prabang, Laos
Discovery festival: In wealthy countries, young people get a range of experiences that that contribute to their personal and mental development: Going to museums. Playing board games. Reading for pleasure. Watching movies. Expressing their opinion in a group discussion about something of significance. Taking fun day trips to the countryside. Experimenting with science kits. Solving puzzles of many sorts. Learning to speak in public.
Such experiences are much rarer for young people here. For several years, the "Mouse Experience" has provided our staff with opportunities to enjoy and learn from these and other activities. Our "Discovery Days" take this experience to schools and youth centers.
This event was sponsored by Manoj Paul (United States). Thank you!
Our first-ever Discovery Day was held at the Orphanage School, which houses and teaches 500 students, from primary school through high school. (Our website Photo Album is in reverse chronological order, so this appears after the 2nd Discovery Day, at the public library.)
The kids, our staff, and two out-of-town supporters who attended all agreed it was a smashing success. We had eighteen varied activities, of which we can only show a sampling here. Many were the same as those we offered at the Luang Prabang Public Library the following day (which, here on our website, appears before this page).
Manoj Paul's continuing financial support made these two Discovery Days possible. He also sought out and donated Lincoln log and Tinkertoy sets to us. They were a great hit. If we'd had more, we wouldn't have needed anything else. There's a good reason they are considered classic toys; unfortunately, we haven't found a way to get more in Laos or Thailand. Our staff explained how to stack them, but the fence was the original creation of these girls; no one one our staff had used the pieces that way before.
Also last year, Ray and Carlos, Jane and Jacinta, and Bill all brought us rocks. Yes, we wanted rocks. They brought fossils and crystals and collections. In a country that's got mostly limestone, students were intrigued by the variety. But most exciting of all was a piece of pumice: the rock that floats. Everyone wanted to see it.
Khamla is demonstrating a toy with hundreds of sliding green rods, which when pressed against a face or hand, show the impression on the other side. It's fun all by itself. For older students, it also demonstrates how computers remember pictures. Just as this device uses many numbers (the length of each rod) to reveal a shape, a computer uses many numbers to store a picture.
Nola leads the "What Am I?" game. Each player has a picture and a word on their forehead. They don't know what it is, but everyone else can see it. They must use yes-or-no questions to figure out what they are.
Naturally, we set up a reading area. These students are reading Life in the Sea, and World War II.
Have you ever used a ViewMaster? None of these kids ever had, and the only bad behavior of the day arose when it came time to share the view. It didn't always happen as peacefully as in this case. If you're coming our way and have an old (or new) ViewMaster, please bring it along. We'll give you a Peacemaker award.
Two other organizations set up activities: "My Library" had an interactive display about how the human hand works. The Traditional Arts and Ethnology Museum brought a game, as well as displaying clothing and crafts from some of the many ethnic groups in Laos.
Modeling clay brought up from Thailand was used for everything from cell phones to snakes.
In the Number Game, each team rolls 3 big dice. They combine the numbers that come up, using standard math operations, to make a new number, then they cover that number (on the board, in the back) with their color. The winner is the first team to get 4 in a row. Who knew that practicing math could be so much fun?
Test your smells. Nola put a different scent into each of 12 cups, covered it, and put a number on front. You smell that, and describe it. Then you go to a second set of 12 cups, with the same smells but in a different order, and try to match them up. No going back for a second sniff! It's fun. It challenges your powers of description. And it illustrates the power of language. If you know the name of a smell, you can usually match it up correctly in the second set of cups. If you don't have a name for that smell, it's difficult to recognize it later.
This page doesn't show the toothpick puzzles, optical illusions and 3-D pictures, the very popular kaleidoscope, or many other activities that were just as enjoyable. The weekend left us eager to hold Discovery Days in other towns and schools.
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