By Sophie Birkett | Charitable Trust manager
Creative play is an important part of our programme at Ikhayalethemba Village. The great thing about creative play is that children develop their social skills; interacting, talking and sharing. This play is also so essential to the development of children's physical skills, language and problem solving. One of our key goals at Ikhayalethemba is for the children to develop strong English skills and through Creative play children have many opportunities to develop their English language.
When we had some financial donations for Ikhayalethemba just prior to Christmas, we decided to put it toward a playhouse for the children. A playhouse provides an opportunity for children to role play and to interact with each other in a positive way. It is a wonderful opportunity for children to engage in Creative play. We decided that the playhouse would be a Christmas present from Father Christmas.
There was great excitement at Ikhayalethemba when Father Christmas' present arrived early. The children looked on with anticipation as a van drove up and in the back were large wooden shapes. They sat as a group to watch their gift unfold. It wasn't long before the children could recognise that the shapes were going to make a playhouse. As the workers put the playhouse together the children sat attentively. Once they realised what it was going to be, they started planning what they could put in it. The carers were joking that they would put their own beds in there to sleep, much to the amusement of the children. Once the house was erected, the workers stained it and so the children had to wait to explore for an hour and a half whilst it dried. They did this well and managed to line up an array of things that they thought would be suitable to use inside the house. Already the children's creativity was kicking in!
Since that first day the children have loved their playhouse. They have developed all sorts of role play situations and it's lovely to see them play so cooperatively. It made a great stable for our Christmas Nativity and many of our class lessons have been done inside the playhouse.
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