Emyezweni News 2007

Emyezweni News 2007

New Term
This term got off to a great start with the pre-school bursting at the seams. We have 77 children on role and a waiting list of over 80, mainly for the youngest class. Each of our three classes has new children and we have experienced the usual settling in phase in our first full month. All of our children are now happily settled into new classes and learning codes of conduct and class expectations. We have started swimming again, in the photo our first group of swimmers prepare to get wet!

Sponsorship
Ukuthasa have agreed to sponsor our Grade R class, which means we are able to offer free places to 25 children. This will enable parents to save up for primary school fees and uniform for next year and also ensures that children in the poorest families are able to attend school and receive essential pre-school experience.

Resources
Helderberg Christian Church has taken over the resource costing for Emyezweni this year and Rachel and myself had a lovely morning at our local educational supplier's buying paint, paper, glue and other resources. It was amazing how quickly we managed to spend over R1000 but wonderful to return to school and start using it with the children.

Topics
This term the whole school is looking at the theme of 'Ourselves'; children have been busy painting portraits, making models of homes and thinking about the local community.
Ukuthasa have kindly funded the cost of a toothbrush for each child and everyone is now busy brushing twice a day at school with special sparkly toothpaste as we think about how to keep ourselves healthy.

Parents Meeting
Our first meeting of the year was a great success as we explained our focus on healthy living to our parents. We demonstrated our tooth brushing campaign and asked the parents to provide only healthy snacks for the children to eat at break time. We also discussed how to improve general tooth care by visiting the dentist and brushing teeth at home before bed -time.

Training
Two of our staff are attending a level 1 Child Care and Development course run in Lwandle by Share Educare. This is an accredited training course, which provides excellent foundation skills for Educare and Pre-school workers. This is the first time that this course has been run in Xhosa in Lwandle and at least ten local day care centres will benefit from this training.