Singakwenza, which means “We can do it” is a Non-Profit Organisation providing Early Childhood Education to economically disadvantaged communities.
Showing Julia and Dorette from the NGO, Book Dash, how much the children love their stories was such fun today. These ladies and their authors and illustrators are giving preschool children the opportunity to own books that mirror their world instead of only being offered windows into other children’s experiences. Thank you to them and their donors for enabling us to give books to our creches for story time and books for the little ones to take home and keep.
If South Africa is going to be able to do anything about the literacy crisis, we need to make sure that our children are surrounded by an abundance of words – meaningful, expressive, enriching words that they hear, read and use. The wider the vocabulary of our children when they enter school, the easier they will find learning to read for meaning. That is one of the reasons that the latest donation we received from Book Dash is so meaningful!
912 books were kindly sponsored, which means that all 760 children currently in our creches will get their own book to take home and keep forever, and all 18 creches have new books to add to their library for daily story time. Thank you to the amazing donors that have sponsored this contribution towards improving literacy.
Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? These ladies from the Hilton Methodist Autumn Gold group had great fun learning how to make balls and ropes out of bread bags recently. Sthembile and Thandeka from our team enjoyed sharing their skills with these lovely ladies.
What a successful training trip to the Western Cape! We trained 300 delegates at 8 Waste2Toys workshops, and are so excited about the work these amazing people are doing in early education. Thank you to all the organizations who hosted the workshops: Overstrand Association of Persons with Disabilities, Masikhule, Campus Kids Child Development Centre, Yebo and Game Changers from Western Cape Department Of Cultural Affairs And Sport, St. Joseph’s Special School and True North Vrygrond. We are honoured to have worked with such inspiring people.
Our van, sponsored by Barloworld Logistics, took us safely on a round trip of over 4 500km from Pietermaritzburg via Colesberg to Hermanus, Somerset West, Bellville, Kuils River, Montana, Vrygrond, and back. We are so grateful for this amazing sponsorship, as without it we would not be able to offer training in these communities.
If you want some idea of how much household packaging is used during our Waste 2 Toys training workshops, have a look at how much our team packed to take to 8 workshops in the Western Cape! The recycling in those bags and boxes will enable each of the 300 workshop participants to make one sample of each of the Gross Motor toys. Plus each of those delegates are mandated to train at least one other person. Pleased to be doing our little bit on World Environment Day.
Form constancy is the ability to recognise items even if they change in color, size, texture, orientation or position. This is an important skill for reading, writing and maths. There are lots of different activities you can use to develop this skill, and here is a simple one using lids and a cereal box. It is also great for talking about and comparing sizes.
