Education South Africa Project #27472

Education for Children in Rural South Africa

by Even Ground

Education for Children in Rural South Africa

Project Report | Dec 21, 2017
What You Give When You Give

By Jenna Stone | Head of Development Strategy

Empathy

If you haven't seen all of the commotion on social media already, we've been highlighting what you give to children when you give to Thanda...

To provide some background, our After-school Programmes began in 2008 but at the time, we focused primarily on homework help and sports. Assisting children with homework help revealed that most students had gaps in their reasoning skills and in their foundational understanding of academic subjects. Children were more concerned with answering questions correctly rather than understanding how those answers came to be. We realised that most children growing up in our community (and many children around the world) lack opportunities to build what are often referred to as "soft skills" or "life skills" so time spent on academics has limited long-term value.

We identified five core skills - empathy, self-esteem, perspective, critical thinking, and creativity - that we believe are fundamental to developing good neighbours, good citizens, and the next generation of resilient, confident young adults who contribute to a better world. These five skills became the foundation for what is now known as our Creative Learning Curriculum (CLC).

Over the course of the past month, we've highlighted a different skill on our blog every week. Our first blog post focused on how we use Dr. Seuss' The Lorax to teach empathy and why this skill is necessary for creating a more peaceful world. Our second blog post listed six ways to create a safe space that builds self-esteem. In our third blog post, we discussed the concept of perspective and shared a video about how we use the book, Life on Mars, in our curriculum. Our fourth blog post highlighted some of the books and resources we use to teach critical thinking, and also how teaching children to play chess can develop this vital skill. And our final blog post talked about arguably our favorite skill: creativity.

Your support is giving children in rural South Africa opportunities to develop these skills every day - it has given art projects, science experiments, chess tournaments, and so much more. For that, we cannot thank you enough.

“Amoung the world’s children starting school this year, 65 percent will end up doing jobs that haven’t been invented yet…Since we can’t predict exactly what today’s young people will need to know in ten or twenty years, what we teach them is less important than how they learn to teach themselves…the crucial task of education is to teach kids how to learn. To lead them to want to learn. To nurture curiosity, and encourage wonder, and to instill confidence so that later on they’ll have the tools for finding answers to the many questions we don’t know yet how to ask”

-Salman Khan

Self-esteem

Perspective

Creativity

Critical thinking

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Sep 27, 2017
Make learning fun!

By Shannon Vaughan | Marketing & Partnership Manager

Blowing up balloons

Another great term has gone by...chock-full of fun, experimenting and learning! In the third term, our Grades R&1 and 2&3 groups did science experiments outside of their classroom. One experiment involved combining different chemicals (like bicarbonate of soda and vinegar) to see that a gas is released. Then, we observed how the gas created from the chemical reaction could be used to blow up a balloon. We also played with bubbles and saw how it was possible to create bubbles of different shapes. Sli, our Grade 2&3 Facilitator explained that for the children in her class “Science was like watching magic, they were so excited!”

One of our favourite games this term was the "Roll a Monster" game. The game uses a dice and each number on the dice represents a body part (for example, the number four is a head). Depending on what number each child rolls, he or she has to draw the corresponding body part on a piece of paper to create their own unique monster. The dice goes around the group a few times and depending on what the dice rolls, one child might end up with a monster that has two tails, four heads, and seven arms. One of our After-school Facilitators said that through this game, “Children got to learn and practice their numbers but also really enjoyed the game and the drawing, and seeing the funny monsters that were created - their monsters looked really silly and they loved that!”

As the third term comes to a close, we're looking forward to skating, playing and doing art at our Community Centre during the school holidays. Your support has enabled all of this and so much more - giving children invaluable opportunities for learning and development, and a safe place to spend their free time. We look forward to sharing activities from our next term with you!

Successful experiment!

Making square bubbles

Dice Monsters!

Links:

Check out our latest blog on redefining rebelliousness!

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Jun 29, 2017
Mid-year report

By Shannon Vaughan | Partner & Marketing Manager

Making a spider web and learning about textures

With over 800 children from the Mtwalume community enrolled in our Early Childhood Development and After-school Programmes this year, things have been busy! Your support provides opportunities for these children to gain creative life skills and a meaningful education, and for that, we cannot thank you enough. To ensure all children enrolled are able to enjoy the activities on a full belly, Thanda provides a nutritious meal every day. So far this year, we have served 41,797 meals, and most of the vegetables within each meal are from our Organic Farming Programme.

This year we expanded our ECD class from 19 to 60 children. Every day our ECD learners start the day with a morning song that is based on the theme they will be covering that day. They then have an interactive discussion around that theme, participate in art activities and enjoy story time before their nap. They also get an opportunity to work on counting, puzzles or their fine motor skills with plenty of time to play.

Throughout the After-school programmes we use stories as a base for all activities, This provides the children an opportunity to develop their literacy skills and allows them to identify with characters in the engaging activies. As the children love reading (between January and May they had borrowed 2633 books from the Thanda Library), we now have a mobile Librarian who attends each school to ensure that all the children get a chance to take out a book.

For an example of how we use stories to create a theme for the After-school activities, our Grade R&1’s watched the Spiderman movie and then discussed the definition of a “hero”. Through this theme, they learnt about spiders, made anagrams using letters of the word spiderman, and made their own spider webs by weaving wool. Another example covered this year is how the Grade 2 & 3's read The Giving Tree, and followed that with a discussion about their responsibility to look after their environment while learning about trees, the water cycle, and pollution.

Your contribution to our programmes ensures that these vulnerable children are given a fair chance in life - they feel empowered to break the cycle of poverty and have hope for their futures. We look forward to sharing with you what we cover in the second half of the year and, on behalf of everyone in our community, extend our deepest gratitude for your support.

Learning how to recycle

Making tangrams

A day in Mtwalume

Checking out Library books

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