The pandemic has taken its toll on everyone, especially young children. For the past year, with the COVID 19 outbreak, the focus has been on finding safe ways to get learners back to school and finish the curriculum. There wasn’t much emphasis on the children’s social wellbeing and allowing them to have fun at school and play like they used to because of the fear of contracting the virus.
With the country having moved to alert Level 1 of lockdown, the Cape Town future leader cohort decided to do something small which packed a lot of fun for learners! In the process, they gave back to the schools that learners came to know as a place of comfort and growth in the years prior to the pandemic.
Courtney November, GTI Future Leader, said that they had decided to celebrate Easter with learners this year. This is the start of the many Social Development activities to come that the group has committed to doing. Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life. We wanted to bring that spirit for a day at the schools.
Through a series of fun activities, like the egg race, egg hunt, and egg colouring, 100 Grade 3 learners from Vergenoeg Primary School, Sonwabo Primary School, and St Augustine’s Primary School participated in rotation on activities that happened simultaneously. Each activity happened for 20 minutes, making the entire day a 1-hour event for each school.
We created activities with educational elements to stimulate learning while having fun outside of the classroom. We observed careful COVID-19 protocols at each school. All utensils and tools used were new and cleaned for each new group. Future Leaders sanitized all the learners before and after playing the games, and social distancing measures were followed during this time.
