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Over 100 children’s lives burst with colour and imagination down the rabbit hole of the wondrous world of words thanks to Claremont Library’s five-week reading programme in celebration of the National Literacy Month of September.
The integrated reading programme’s theme was the classic tale of Alice in Wonderland where partnering libraries ensured that six educare centres received 25 books each, five of which were read each week.
Claremont’s Assistant Librarian Nuhaa Portland explained that these books, carefully selected to be easily integrable to the centres’ existing curriculum, were delivered before the programme started.
“Each centre’s teachers worked through the different books with learners based on the theme of the week, the teachers then asked questions to see if the children understood the information as read to them in the books,” Portland illustrated.
She invited People’s Post to join in the fun on Wednesday 20 September at the local Rush Indoor Extreme Trampoline Park at Stadium on Main. It was a joyful closing chapter where 130 participating children jumped into sponsored neon socks, said Rush’s manager, Richard Poulton.
He said: “In anticipation of the children’s visit to Rush, we asked willing patrons to donate their used socks, which we recycled for today. We washed the donated socks and sorted them according to size which was delivered to each centre beforehand.”
Over two days two different groups of roughly 70 Grade-R learners were hosted at the fun park as a last hurrah to the programme that started on Monday 14 August and ended on Monday 11 September.
It involved the following Educare centres, five of which are located in Manenberg, along with one NPO: Smart Steps Academy (28 learners), Little Lillies (30), Mustadafin Educare Centre (14), Strawberry Play Centre (25), Bumble Bee Educare (15), Manenberg Moravian Crèche (15) and Love Out Loud NPO (three).
Speaking to what the programme meant to their learners, the principal of Strawberry Play Centre Maraldea Davids said it was “a great initiative and gesture, especially to us in Manenberg, to expose our children to books . . . not only reading them, but to also engage their imaginations with role models as illustrated by the different story characters.
“This programme opens a lot of opportunities for our children and us as teachers. The programme made it easy to integrate the reading into our language and creative artwork lessons, for example. It was so rewarding to the learners, as well as the teachers,” said Brendalean King, the principal of Manenberg Moravian Crèche.
On her turn, the principal of Bumble Bee Educare Gadija Abrahams said this opened a new world to their learners, most of whom come from broken homes. “Our kids aren’t familiar with the concept of libraries. And the way Nuhaa set out the integrated programme is unlike the way our curriculums are designed, which made it so easy and enjoyable in a manner that boosted the learners’ intellectual and cognitive abilities.”
Abrahams added that she was touched by the way the programme helped her learners to recognise the sounds which they could associate with the spelling of words. Portland showed off the programme’s custom made buckets containing the children’s minimum of five-word-reviews about the books they read.
“I made these containers to look like the Cheshire Cat, as well as the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland with openings where the children’s reviews of at least one book per week were written on a template provided by the library, and submitted,” she beamed.
Portland applauded her partners, which she credited to attending media, Rush, the libraries’ marketing department, Professional Services Programmes (PSP) and supporting members from the Southfield, Lansdowne, Manenberg, Athlone, Pinelands and Wynberg libraries.
