Lets meet Omar

Who is Omar, you might be wondering.

When I first started teaching I had a young student called Omar, who came to every single dance class with his imaginary friend, a little elephant, who he called Mr Elephant.

Mr Elephant was as much a part of the class as Omar and he always took his turn doing the skips across the room, and all the plies and the jumps. If he fell, which he sometimes did, I had to pick him up. I always had to hold his little hand in our corner work, and even sometimes send him out for a parent to take to the toilet.

He was an integral and important part of the class, and most importantly, he was an integral part of my journey to understand about teaching children.

Omar and Mr Elephant taught me so much about how necessary it is for a child’s imagination to be encouraged.

Imagination is the key to new ideas, to learning and growing, and to developing creative minds.

So now I have the new Omar, who is my imaginary friend, inspired by my wonderful student from the past, the real Omar.

My Omar lives in a magic box in the Treehouse.

Omar teaches us how to count in time with music, and loves adventure.

Omar is always heading off somewhere and leads us into all sorts of wonderful places to dance and to have fun, the Garden, the Beach or the Forest.

Discovering Omar for themselves.

In our segment in each dance class called Omar’s Box, every child can decide who Omar is, for themselves. Omar is a character on their screens who doesn’t have an identity, an age, a gender, or a race.  They can decide what ever they want Omar to be.

And that is the beauty and magic of Creative Imagination.

The Real Omar today…

Omar Rihani is 19 now, plays the guitar, saxophone, piano and drums, and is dancing and singing up a storm. He still remembers Mr Elephant who came to dance class with him when he was 4 years old. Omar performs regularly around Sydney, and he hopes to  study music production and musical theartre when he finishes school.