Creative Works at the FCW Parents’ Workshop
Play is not a luxury; it is a neccesity. It is is the way children learn. We know that the first years in a child’s life are the most important and crucial. We are setting children up for success if we support them holistically on all levels of their development.
Parents and caregivers are the key to a child’s development and education in these early years. Many parents do not have the knowledge and understanding on how to enhance their children’s development.
Many parents in under-resourced communities did not have a childhood that was full of fun play activities and therefore they have nothing to draw from. Those parents need to be exposed to play themselves. They need the experience of how it feels to play, to have fun with a piece of play dough, and to learn from that experience in order to share it with their own children.
Parents and children have to be facilitated towards a bonding, loving and fun-filled time together where the foundation for further learning is laid.
At Creative Works we acknowledge the importance of education for parents using themes such as play, movement and sensory stimulation. We offer workshops where we address these themes with parents, teachers and caregivers.
This month Jenny October, the leader of the FCW (Foundation for Community Works) team, invited us to present a workshop on play activities to their parents group. The FCW workers are a group of woman trained by Jenny October who visit families on a daily basis in the Stanford, Gansbaai and Hermanus area to educate parents about ECD.
In the workshop we focussed on enhancing hand skills via playdough activities as well as making our own balls from crumpled-up newspaper and book making to enhance early literacy and fine motor skills in a inteactive way for parents and children. The parents had fun with the playdough and worked together with their children in the process.
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
G.K. Chesterton
By Regina Broenner