Bring your treasure

Objectives

• Expressing yourself
• Getting to know each other
• Teambuilding
• Discovering and appreciating differences between learners
• Organising the content of your bag or pocket
• Becoming aware of what you can/need to bring when you leave your house
• Becoming more independent when you know what to bring with you

Material

Treasures, bags and pockets and their content

Preparation

Preparation time: up to 15 minutes to prepare your introduction (you tell about your treasure and/or what’s in your bag?)

Instructions

The activity involves bringing a personal item to the session, displaying it to the group, and sharing a meaningful story or information about the item. The facilitator breaks the ice by sharing a story first.

Don’t forget to remind the participants beforehand to bring an item with them!

Variation or follow up activity: What’s in your bag?

In this variation, members take a look inside their bags or pockets and share and discuss the items they find. The facilitator leads a discussion focusing on distinguishing between what is nice to have versus what is necessary to have in one’s bag. Additionally, the activity prompts participants to consider potential cultural or personal differences in the items individuals carry.

Variant

• If you’d like to engage in the activity right away, you can simply ask the participants if they would be willing to take something out of their bag or pocket and share a story about it.
• Participants can choose to share a story about a large item or an artwork. In this case, they have the option to share a photo of the item instead of physically presenting it.
• A follow up activity: participants will create a drawing depicting the contents of their bags or pockets. This activity serves to revisit the discussion on what items are desirable versus essential to bring along. Following the drawing session, participants will engage in discussions about their drawings with one another. To facilitate this process, you may opt to provide a template of a bag for them to fill out.