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Flags and children
Thanks to close collaboration between a German nursery school and www.flaggenlexikon.de, a project launched in early 2005 succeeded in teaching pre-school children not only basic geographical knowledge but also fundamental concepts of design theory and geometry in an engaging way.
This nursery had originally planned a project called 'Journey Around the World'; they had put up a children’s world map on the wall, and were now searching the internet for country flags to liven up the ‘Journey Around the World’ a little visually and incorporate it into a guessing game. Once contact had been established with www.flaggenlexikon.de (the German portal of www.flag-encyclopedia.com), the website provided around 200 images of flags.
The children showed a great deal of interest in the flags. They were particularly fascinated by the variety of shapes and colours. They spotted triangles, rectangles, stripes, diamonds, circles, symbols, animals and plants in the flags. The flags were first painted onto the windows using window paints, following the templates that had been printed out on paper.
The printed-out flags were then placed in clear plastic sleeves, tied together with a ribbon and laid out for the children in the craft room. The children enjoyed tracing the flags and kept asking which countries the different flags belonged to. Tracing the flags helped to develop their understanding of geometry and the spatial arrangement of shapes. Some copied the flags in their original format, such as 3:2, and even fitted several onto a single sheet. Others drew a single flag in large format on a sheet of A4 paper, i.e. they adapted the geometry of the flags to a different scale and format.
The 'Journey Around the World' took the children to Italy, amongst other places, and included a spaghetti meal at the nursery. Then preparations began for the onward journey to China, also accompanied by a ‘culinary excursion’ and a mention of the Buddhist New Year, which fell during this period, as well as information about the Buddhist lunar calendar, so that we could visit Easter Island – which belongs to Chile – just in time for Easter. ....
To help the children understand the cultural significance and origins of the flags, www.flaggenlexikon.de provided a text describing the historical origins of the flag itself. This text was adapted for young children by a member of staff at the nursery and presented to the children:
• Flags have their origins in the 'shields' of knights (which children can easily picture). In addition, there were messengers at that time, known as 'heralds', who memorised a wide variety of shields. Then banners came into use. The coat of arms was transferred from its original form – the shield – to the rectangular shape of the flag. Flags took on particular significance in shipping (communication between ships using the flag alphabet and semaphore). The individual countries of the world have their own national flags.
• Clarification of various flag-related terms: flags, parade flags, 'hoisting' a flag (raising a flag up the flagpole), bicolour (two-coloured flag), tricolour (three-coloured flag), emblem, etc.
Various educational exercises and games were carried out using the flags:
• Where can you see real flags? E.g. at the Olympic Games, in hotels, town halls, etc.
• Read out the names of the countries represented by the flags using a list or a map, and then test the children’s knowledge
• Make flags (using kebab skewers as flagpoles, or in small format with toothpicks)
• Transferring flags onto windows using window paints from a template
• Freehand copying in small or large formats (e.g. transferring a flag onto A4 paper), or recreating flags using coloured paper or strips of paper (e.g. China: sticking a large star and four small stars onto red paper)
• Making a flag garland (hanging several flags from a taut string)
• Baking a flag cake, e.g. Italy: green – kiwis, white – bananas, red – raspberries
• Making a flag memory game
Conclusion
Children learn about the variety of colours and shapes through play: stripes, circles, the sun, plants, symbols, stars, moons, triangles, diamonds, animals, etc. Working with the flags helps to develop, for example, an understanding of geometry: triangles, rectangles, diamonds and circles, particularly when transferring a small template to a larger scale (e.g. on A4 paper, the small red circle from the template for the Japanese flag is not drawn just as small, but much larger), whilst taking into account the proportions and spatial arrangement of the flag’s elements in relation to one another. Copying the flags promotes fine motor skills (precision when painting). An important factor is memory training: pupils should be able to distinguish between and name different flags. This provides excellent entry points into history and geography. And finally: every day – usually without us realising it – we come across the subject of 'flags' in a wide variety of ways and forms. After all, it is not just when, for example, flags are flown at half-mast, but even without any specific occasion, that flags, pennants and banners are a constant presence on houses and cars, at sporting events and on TV. You can find them in city-centre department stores or online in the army shop. So there are plenty of reasons to familiarise our children with this topic. In this way, we foster certain skills and abilities from an early age, thereby helping children to lay important foundations for their future lives right from the start.
