Our K2 children and team embarked on our Start Small Dream Big journey on the launch day, 6 April 2018. Our title for this project is Tiny Hands, Big Hearts; turning compassion into action. In this project, we are partnering with All Saints Home. We hope that at the end of this project our children will learn to interact positively with the elderly by engaging in meaningful activities. We also want our children to be able to show our elderly kindness, care and respect.
During our virtual launch, we invited representatives from All Saints Home to join us and they gave us a brief explanation of what they do at All Saints Home as well as why we need to care for the elderly. Our teachers also did a dramatization about an elderly lady who faced problems along her way home. The children were invited to show and tell everyone what they should do to show kindness, care and respect towards the elderly lady.
We learnt that Josh’s grandfather loves planting and working around his garden hence we invited Mr Goh to share his passion with the children and our guests. The interaction between Josh and his grandpa was an excellent example for the children to learn that they can enjoy a meaningful activity with elderly.
As we continue on our journey, the children started on their inquiry about people around us. They became more observant and aware of the different people around them. They saw elderly people on wheelchairs and using walking stick as support. They also saw young children who move around in wheelchairs. Besides that, they observed many people pushing the shopping cart, trolley and baby pram around. The children became curious and wonder if these people face difficulty moving around the neighbourhood especially where there are steps and staircase. Therefore, the children experimented with ramps as they thought a ramp would help ease part of the people’s journey getting form one point to another. It was also pleasing to see the children practising their lovely manners as they greeted the elderly they met during their outdoor experience.
When we discussed about what meaningful activities we can do with the elderly, the children came up with a lot of ideas. We decided to choose two games that promote a healthy lifestyle. It involves exercising and the children thought it would benefit the elderly as they need to keep themselves fit too. The games focus on their upper body and hand movement; aiming and throwing a ball and moving their hand in different direction and motion. They children made one game from a big box. They traced the holes while the teacher helped to cut it out with a penknife. Then they decorated the box to make it more attractive.
Dancing was one activity the children thought was meaningful to do with the elderly. “When they move their body or part of their bodies to the music, they are actually doing simple exercise!” said the children. Hence the children decided that they should do a dance item for the elderly. Since we will be visiting the home during Hari Raya. We thought it would be appropriate to dance to a Hari Raya song.
As we prepare for our trip to the All Saints Home, we wanted to share with them what we learnt in school. The children wrote their thoughts about how they show care, kindness and respect to the elderly. Some of the children also made a thank you card to the social workers and nurses at All Saints Home, appreciating their work, patience and professionalism while taking care of all the elderly at the home.
We visited the All Saints Home @ Tampines on Thursday, 28 June 2018. We started off our visit with a dance to a Hari Raya song with the elderly. Later, we played two games with them. We encouraged the elderly people to participate in our game by using kind and positive words such as, “Come on, let’s wave the parachute high”, “That is awesome!”, “You can do it!”, “Good throw!” The children cheered when they see the elderly people trying.
As part of our inquiry is about social work, we interviewed the social worker at All Saints Home, Mr Bernard. We found some answers to our questions through Mr Bernard’s slide presentation about social workers and what we can do to help as volunteers.
The children also presented their cards filled with their thoughts about our journey to Ms Mei and Mr Bernard.
