Little Divas girls program - December 14th & 21st

For the last two sessions of the Little Divas girls' program in December 2018, we began exploring the theme "love is love". We started into this theme by discussing the question "what is normal?" We thought "normal" is what people expect us to be or do, or what usually happens in a given situation. We also talked about what it means or feels like to not be normal - being weird or different, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as it isn't hurting anyone! We went further into the concept of "normal" and thought about who decides what is "normal" and what is not, and where we get those ideas from. We talked about how the idea of "normal" is different for everyone, and in fact it's really just made up and perpetuated by people with some sort of power or influence in our society. That's also why the idea of what is "normal" is often different in different cultures and different parts of the world.


After the girls had a good grasp of the concept of "normal", and of "normal" being societally constructed, we started to introduce the idea of LGBTQ+ relationships. We showed the girls several pictures and asked them to guess certain things about the people in the pictures - ie. Do you think these people are just friends? Do you think they are dating? Which of these people do you think is dating a girl? These questions helped us gauge the girls' prior knowledge and preconceived notions about LGBTQ+ relationships, and their level of comfort and familiarity with these themes and terminology. Because this can be a fairly wide topic, we then gave the girls the opportunity to anonymously write down some questions they may have about LGBTQ+ relationships and identities, and submit them to a question box that we would then answer their questions from.

After putting the girls' anonymous questions aside to answer later, we then introduced our next activity, which was a talk show in the format of an advice column. Using pre-written scenarios and questions from "viewers" of the show, the girls acted as hosts of the talk show, giving advice to their LGBTQ+ youth viewers, who were written as being around the girls' own ages and facing problems to do with their LGBTQ+ identities.

We then went through just some of the anonymous questions that the girls submitted about LGBTQ+ issues, and started to discuss some answers and the themes around those questions.

The next week, December 21st, was the last session of 2018 before the holiday break. The girls had pyjama day at school that day, so we brought that same theme to our session and we all wore our pyjamas for our last day together before the new year!

We wanted the last session before the break to be a bit more laid back, but we did still have some content to cover, including getting some feedback from the girls about their thoughts and feelings about participating in the Little Divas program up until that point. To do this, we asked the girls to write or draw on a large chart paper and answer the questions "What are some new things you learned this year?" and "What is your favourite thing we did this year?"




We also asked the girls to share some of their feelings and hopes going into the holiday season and the new year, by answering what one wish they had for someone they knew, for themselves, and for the world.




Then we got into our holiday party activities! We played some fun games and then we also decorated sugar cookies for the holidays. The girls really used their artistic eyes and abilities to make their cookies beautiful!


       







































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