When Gloucester Public School teacher Berrill Ley came across Project KIN on Facebook, she thought it would be a great project for her year three/four class.
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Project KIN is a charity devoted to seeing Australian children living in poverty play and learn, by giving them educational resources which may have life-changing impact.
It all about providing a Play and Learn Pack, which includes a unique doll, doll accessories, the Imagine If You Had a Friend storybook, an activity book which supplements the project KIN picture book, colouring pencils, a bookmark and a calico backpack.
Schools are encouraged to get involved with making the dolls and doll accessories, something Berrill saw as an excellent stage two project, so she committed to making 30 packs.
She brought the project to her class a couple months ago, using it as part of the Human Society and Its Environment syllabus, where students learn the value of helping others.
Overall, the students are learning a range of skills as they build the dolls from the ground up. They need to trace out the doll pattern onto fabric with chalk avoiding as much waste as possible, then they need to cut it out.
"The project uses maths and languages. The students are writing about it and reading about it," Berrill explained. "It covers lots of areas of the syllabus."
While Berrill takes parts of the project home to sew and embroider, the students still have plenty of jobs to do, which they work on one afternoon a week, and sometimes when they've finished their classwork early.
Students can be seen making hair pieces out of yarn, stuffing the sewn up doll parts, and even designing their own range of clothing for the dolls to take with them. Some of the students' extended families have gotten involved with a few parents and grandparents making doll quilts to go in the pack. As a special addition, the students wanted to make a suitcase for the doll to carry its clothes in, recycling plastic meat containers, decorating them and adding a handle and a latch.
"Each student leaves their mark on a doll with their name written in a heart sown on the back," Berrill smiled.
The project has been opened up to all of the stage two students, years three to six, and Berrill believes the school will now be able to donate 50 instead of the original promise of 30.
Berrill was due to deliver the first batch to the organisation during the recent school holidays.
To learn more about the project visit, www.projectkin.org/
