The children from New Life Preschool @ Outram launch the Start Small Dream Big project in the month of May right after the school term ended for the first semester.
They embarked on the journey of exploring and learning on ways to show cares for the communities and the people around them through the stories series Becky Bunny’s Adventures for Life storybook resources distributed to schools by Families for Life. Our teachers take time each day to read the stories and engaged in meaning discussion about the different family values portrayed in the stories with the children. Through these series, the children exhibited curiosity and interest in caring for their grandparents and seniors especially in the story title ‘The Big Move’ where Becky Bunny’s family shifted house to stay nearer to their grandparents.
Riding on the children’s interest, we did a google search for an elderly home within our community and connected with Lee Ah Mooi old age home which is a stone throw away from our school. We were thrilled that the person in charge, Mr Danny Tan was open for our children to volunteer and interact with the seniors under their care. With that in mind, the children discussed about the languages that our senior uses, the way to greet them, the food that they can eat, the games and craft activities to work with them. It is truly heartening to see the children learning children’s song in dialect languages and practicing on their dance performance.
In conjunction with our New Life Preschool June holiday program on Healthier Me, the children decided to incorporate what they have learnt like healthy eating and staying fit through regular exercise to prepare for their field trip to Lee Ah Mooi Old Age Home. The K1 and K2 children designed a ‘Healthy Eating’ poster to share with the seniors on the importance of a balance diet and what are the better choices when it comes to choose ingredients. In addition, the children learned the ‘Healthy Dance (健康体操）’ as a performance for the seniors.
In the last week leading up to the actual day of visiting the seniors at Lee Ah Mooi Old Age Home, we involved the parents in preparing for a care pack for the children to distribute to the seniors. Inside the care pack are items such as masks, biscuit, milo sachets and well wishing care especially crafted by the children and their parents. This created some buzz and excitement among the families.
Fast forward to THE DAY of the field trip, we have a total of 20 children, five parents and 10 teachers loading the bus with our props and care packs making our way to visit the seniors. The only challenge we faced was to ensure that our children were comfortable in wearing mask for this visit. The children champed it by diligently having their mask on upon arrival at the old age home.
‘Healthy Dance (健康体操)’ Performance and Presentation of the ‘Healthy Eating’ poster by the K1 and K2 children.
‘Little Tigers’ Song Performance in Cantonese language by the PG and PN children.
The children playing various games with the seniors.
The children working on the ‘Windmill’ craftwork that we got from Families for Life.
The children distributing the care pack for the seniors.
The children came back from the Lee Ah Mooi old age home with their hearts filled with the love from the seniors. Our parent volunteers were delighted and felt that it was a unique project where they have the chance to role model to their children on how they should do volunteering works together as a family. We also heard many comments from the seniors praising the children saying that they made their day and especially so with the cute performance that they enjoyed. Our children definitely brought some smiles and joys to the old age home that day! We were thankful for this opportunity to spread some joy and love through this meaningful project. Just like the saying goes for SSDB, ‘We cannot do everything but everyone can do something!’.
Signing off, Children and Teachers from
-New Life Preschool @ Outram-
