Focusing on children in Argentina

Haciendo LUPA (Mkaing focus) is a program that is developed in various spaces, always through group dynamics, and with literacy and play as the axis with the objective of promoting the development of language and expression. From Pilares, we maintain that play is not "an instrument for", but a fundamental right of children, their time and living space. For this reason, the proposals of "LUPA" are always oriented towards generating playful encounters, from different activities that promote development and learning: artistic expressions, language practices, etc.
In view of the social distance, from the program we started to think about how to continue promoting these encounters, taking into account that the quarantine modified everyone's daily life, multiplying the screens and the imperatives (stay at home, wash your hands, do your homework, read, etc...) Even the best advice and the prettiest proposals can be overwhelming in an age when time and space, those aspects that command us, became so disordered.
We celebrate virtual connections, which allow us to shorten distances and share moments even when we are far away. But we also defend play as a moment cut out of reality, where it becomes necessary to disconnect from the everyday in order to connect with that inner world of fantasy and creativity, without risk, where each girl or boy exercises the freedom to open the door to go and play, and can also close it whenever they want.
For all this, from Haciendo LUPA we invented a magazine for the children of the program. A paper magazine, which can be touched, opened, closed, drawn, painted, taken from here to there. A magazine with proposals of games, adventures, discoveries and creations, in which each one can unfold his own, leave his mark, share with others, in a time without haste, without demands.
We know that we are in a difficult time, with shared cell phones, data that is consumed and batteries that wear out. That's why we aim at the inexhaustible: at the possibility of playing in childhood. We take great care that the magazine is not confused with a task, with a duty to be fulfilled, and that it does not blur in a hobby or an entertainment proposal: our bet is to continue doing magnifying glass in the game and in the literacy, that girls and boys can discover their own power to create and play when they meet the proposed activities.
We have already delivered three issues of the magazine, we made a special delivery for winter vacations and another for the month of children. We continue working on the next issues, and shaping a library project.
In the magazines we included interviews: two plastic artists told us about their works and the things that inspire them, and invited the girls and boys to play and create. We also talked with teachers: we asked them about their childhood games and stories.
The magazine always has invitations to read stories, draw, paint, and solve challenges... Some recipes to prepare something delicious at home, challenges to sharpen one's wits, and also a kit with a different proposal each time: to make a germination, to build a doll to remove pain, or magic papers for a collage. In the special deliveries for the vacations and the month of the children we include games to share with the family: a bingo, a path to walk with challenges, and the trangram, to build everything you can think of with only 7 geometric shapes.
It is very good to be able to meet again with the families, even if it is with distance, with a beard and quickly, to find that smile that you can only see in their eyes today, and to have that short talk when they receive the magazine, where they tell us how they are doing, they are happy that we sent them something for the children, that "we remember"... Impossible not to remember!