CHILDREN’S BRAINS ARE NOT IN LOCKDOWN and as our charity aims to train practitioners, parents and caregivers at a grassroots level to provide fun, educational activities that enable young children to learn through play, supported by resources made solely from recycling, our work is even more important at this time.As all the crèches where we work are closed, our trainers have not been able to undertake their daily visits. However, they are in regular contact with their practitioners to make sure that the COVID-19 messages they are receiving are accurate, and are encouraging them to share our activities with the parents of their children.
We have been working on a series of daily activities that we are sending out via What’s App to our practitioners and their parents, to a number of ECD groups that share them with their communities throughout South Africa, and to our social media followers. We are also looking at getting our message out over community radio stations. These activities (see below for an example) show parents how to make various toys, how to use them and what skills they are developing in their children.
We are delighted to be collaborating with other NGO’s and have prepared a booklet that will be going out with food parcel deliveries to over 500 families. This booklet will give the parents ideas of activities they can do with their children using household packaging and remind them of the importance of stimulating young children.
We have had some wonderful feedback from numerous people who are using the activities. This little boy’s aunt sent this photo to one of our trainers to show her how much he is enjoying a counting activity that she had made for him from the information she had received via What’s App. He has numbers written on toilet roll inners and he is matching the correct number of beans to the numeral. His aunt is so impressed at how clever he is, especially because he hasn’t even started school yet!
All of this is possible because of the incredible support we receive from YOU! Thank you so much for what you do to help our team make a difference in the lives of young children and prepare them for formal schooling.
We are living in ever-changing times and we will continue to look for new opportunities to help parents and practitioners to provide activities for the children in their care. If you have any other ideas we could consider, please do let us know.
If you are on FaceBook, Instagram or Twitter, please consider following us on these platforms for up to date information (the links are below in my email signature) or you can access these daily activities on our website, www.singakwenza.co.za. During this lockdown period, we have also opened up the RESOURCES centre on our Website to allow anyone free access to various activities they can do with their children http://learn.singakwenza.co.za/. Please email us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like the password for this page.
News supplied by Singakwenza.