With its focus on education as a thrust area for development, Essar Foundation has launched several initiatives at schools. Equally, it focuses on programs to prepare pre-school children for schooling.
As part of this, the Foundation recently organized a workshop for anganwadi (childcare center) workers on the pedagogy of early childhood education. The workshop, held on November 17-18 at the Jamnagar Township Recreation Center, was designed to bring out the objectives of play and the importance of toys in that context.
Essar Foundation prepared a ‘Toy Trunk’, containing the ‘tools’ — a doll house, blocks, picture books, manipulation toys, drawing tools, rings, sand play tools and water play tools — for the learning methods in question. Eight activities were laid out using the toys from the Toy Trunk.
The teachers were divided into two groups. Each group played at each activity for five minutes and moved to the next. The Employee Volunteers enthusiastically helped in creating different sections and the enthusiasm and innovation they brought to the games was remarkable. The activity also included a nature walk.
Essar Foundation donated a Toy Trunk to each anganwadi worker for their anganwadis.
