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Warli In Classroom
A Guide To Introducing Warli Art Based Activities In Classroom

Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................ 2
Warli Mobile ............................................................................................... 3
Do! A Sentence ........................................................................................... 7
Warli Inspirations ........................................................................................ 11
Resources .................................................................................................... 12

All work copyrighted to Under The Banyan Tree LLC.

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 Introduction

(Image courtesy: Google)

Warli is an art form of the Warli tribal community of Maharashtra, India. Typically Warli
paintings are done with white rice paste on walls that are painted in rust color. Traditionally the
Warlis paint pictograms with a series of circles and triangles to signify occurrences such as birth,
death, wedding, harvest etc.

To me the elements of Warli art that strikes me as obvious are the spirals, the triangles, the ability
of Warli to convey a story on a canvas and its simplicity. Based on my interpretation of Warli, I
have designed some activities that can be used by educators in a classroom.

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 Warli Mobile

Contributor: UTBTKids, www.utbtkids.com

Target Age Group: 4 - 10

Child Centered/Adult Directed: Child centered. The young four year olds might need some
adult supervision, especially for the drawing part.

Time:
An hour for the adult to study and understand the activity.
15 min for set up.
Approximately 45 minutes to complete the activity.

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Purpose of Activity:
Curriculum Area - Fine Motor Skills. Though simple from an adult perspective, the control of
scissors using the thumb, index and middle fingers is something children struggle to master. The
fine motor control acts as a stepping stone to writing with a pencil/pen.

Secondary purpose - To bring out the key elements of Warli art, namely fluidity, movement,
rhythm, sense of community and joy of creation.

Materials Needed:
(1) A light weight paper plate, approximately 6-8 inches, preferably white in color.
(2) Pencil
(3) Black marker
(4) Scissors
(5) String
(6) Needle

Steps For Preparation:

(1)As the adult directing the activity, make sure you do this activity at least once, from start to
finish, when there are no children around. That way you can make small changes that will make
this activity a success for your group.
(2)Make sure, you have enough supplies for all the children and then some more. At times the
kids do a trial run to warm up or they end up loving the activity so much that they don’t want to
stop.
(3)Give children required safety instructions.
(4)Choose appropriate child friendly scissors.
(5)Have some pre drawn paper plates for the younger children. The emphasis is in the cutting
and coloring.
(6)Adults remember to emphasize process over product. Observe before stepping in to help a
child.

Procedure:
(1) Place the paper plate right side down.
(2) Mark the center of the plate with black marker
(3) With a pencil, draw a spiral shape on the plate. The distance between the lines in your spiral
determines how your finished mobile looks.
(4) Closely spaced the spiral lines will result in a long twisty ribbon.

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(5) Draw your Warli themed pictogram in such a way that the figures are between the lines.
(6) Color your Warli pictogram.

(7) Cut along the spiral line.

(8) Flip the plate and repeat steps 2 - 5.
(9) Thread a fine string through the center of the plate. I used dental floss.
(10)Your Warli mobile is ready. Hang it where it can sway, twirl and spin in a gentle breeze.

Expected Outcomes:
(1)The adult has a fairly good idea of the fine motor skills of the group he/she works with.
(2)At the end of the session, children are familiar with the components of Warli art.
(3)Fun!! What else?!

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Variations:
I believe in re-introducing the same activity multiple times over a period of time. Once you feel
the children have a good understanding of Warli art and its elements, step back and take inputs
from your group. You will be amazed at the variations they come up with. I will leave you with a
picture of at least one variation I can think of. See, the possibilities are endless.

Newspaper cut in to long strips, folded like a fan and cut in to the shape of a Warli style woman.
The chain can then be arranged to any dancing spiral.

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 Do! A Sentence

The following activity is inspired by Do! by Tara

Contributor: UTBTKids, www.utbtkids.com

Curriculum Area: Second Language Development

Name Of Activity: Do! A Sentence

Target Group: Age 4 +

Indian immigrant learning their mother tongue(I have used Tamil) as a second language.
Users need to be familiar with basic Tamil alphabets.

Child Centered/ Adult Directed: Child centered.

Description If Activity:
The pictures in Do! are representative of actions. They are flash card compatible and can be used
in classrooms to learn a second language. Taking this concept a step further, is this activity to use
Do! to help second language learners form sentences.

A basic three word sentence has three components that can be further sub-divided in to many
more components thus providing us lot more information than the three words provide stand
alone. This can be best illustrated by the flow chart below.

Simple three word sentence

Example: I drink milk.

Subject: I Action: drink Object: milk

1st Person: 2nd Person: Past Tense: Future Tense:

I, Me You Drank Drink

Present Tense:
3rd Person:
Drinking
He,She,
They, Them

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I - Pronoun referring to the speaker
Milk - A type of nourishment secreted by the mammary glands of female mammals.
Drink - To take water or any other liquid in the mouth and swallow it.

When these three words, meaning something basic by themselves, when combined together
convey more meaning than what they stand for. In Tamil, it is even more complicated because
the language accommodates the gender and age of the subject. This activity is designed to help
Tamil as a second language learner come up with sentences, boost their confidence and to help
them to make an initiative to talk in Tamil.

Materials Needed:
(1) A file with three rings.

(2) Flash cards with the subject, object and action. Punch holes on the cards so that they can be
placed in the file.

Examples of SUBJECT flash cards. (I, Me, He, She, Them, They, Him, Her)

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Examples of OBJECT flash cards. (Ball, Book, Tree)

Examples of ACTION flash cards. Same verb (PLAY). Red for past tense, yellow for present
tense and blue for future tense.

(3) Dedicated time to do the activity.

Steps For Preparation:

(1) Prepare the subject, object, tense cards that go in the file folders. You can either hand draw or
make copies from a book. I drew the cards by hand and made cards to make sentences in
different tenses and subjects for ten object cards. It took about two hours from start to finish.
(2) Explain to your target audience how to use the flip book.

Procedure:
(1) Choose any card from the first section, namely the subject.

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(2) Choose any card from the second section, namely object.
(3) Choose the tense red for past tense, blue for future tense and yellow for present tense. For
example if you picked yellow for present tense, pick the action cards that matches the object.
Example: Ball -> play. Water -> drink.
(4) Form your sentence. Example, SHE READ A BOOK.

Expected Outcomes:

(1) The user understands the usage of different parts of Tamil language such as gender based
nominalaizers, respect based nominalaizer, negation, tense etc.
(2) Increases confidence to make conversations second language.

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 Warli Inspirations

Warli inspires adults and children equally. With its basic shapes made of circles and triangles
children find it easy to tell their own story in Warli. ArtNavy (abouttimenow.blogspot.com/) and
Vibha (literarysojourn.blogspot.com/) share what Warli inspired their children to create.

Art says, “Over a  year ago, we had read Dancing on Walls from Tulika. This helped Anush
recognise the Warli painting we had had at home for a decade!! She also attempted a free hand
herself on a discarded mishti dahi ( sweet curd) holder terracotta pot, which we gifted to a
friend.”

“Mid year or so, we got a lovely Warli kit which included terracotta pots and a plate. It had an
interesting write up as well on Warli work. Anushka ( nearing five then) insisted on applying the
coat of brown herself. The colour choice rationale was that  Warli is usually done on walls which
are brown- red in colour. This was followed by my doing the outlines for her which she filled in
with care and fair amount of precision. Since she was familiar with geometric shapes, it was
even simpler to explain to her how a few lines, a circle and a couple of triangles can result in a
person.”

Vibha says, “Since the time we were introduced to the warli art, we have very diligently brought
this art in almost every part of our lives - be it our T-shirts, skirts, bed covers, wallhangings or
birthday invitations or thank you notes to school teachers. Raghav and Medha, both enjoy
working with black pens on white background and I keep changing the medium.”

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 Warli Resources And References

ArtNavy recommends Potli (http://www.kadamindia.org/karya_potli.html), an NGO that designs

educational activities and craft kits in order to create an awareness in our children.

Books
Do! by Tara Books, India
Dancing On The Walls by Tulika Books Publishers, India
The First Farmers: A Warli Folktale by Pratham Books

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