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17 Jan 2018
If you walk into any SmartStart programme, you are likely to see one of three things:
1) Children interacting with toys and objects
2) Children listening to a story
3) Children playing with their friends
On the surface, the children don’t seem to be doing anything too groundbreaking – do they? However, during each of these activities, children are in fact developing complex cognitive and character skills, which are preparing them to become productive and successful adults.
But how?
Let’s consider a three-year-old child building a puzzle with a friend. They are each taking turns to complete the puzzle, break it down and build it up again.
What to us might look like a simple (and very repetitive) game, is actually helping...
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05 Sep 2016
Imagine a small girl at home cleaning the kitchen with her mother. The little girl enthusiastically pulls everything from the cupboard and sets to work balancing and building, using the different plastic containers. Repeatedly, she attempts to make a tower but struggles to get the balance right. Then she spots her water bottle and uses it to pour water into her containers. Quickly, the space around her becomes an area of spilt water and toppled plastic-ware. After a while, she appears to lose interest. Her mom gives her a tea-towel to dry the containers and sits with the little girl to help her figure out the best way to pack away the containers.
This simple game (and the interaction with her mother) is packed with a huge amount of learning and development for this child.
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01 Sep 2016
Children arrive in the world ready to learn – even as small babies, they are curious about what is going on around them, watching, listening and taking in the different cues and stimulation in their environment. The brain develops rapidly during the first 5 years of a child’s life and the right stimulation plays a huge role in feeding both their capacity and love for learning.
So what does a good early learning environment look like? While researching the SmartStart curriculum, we identified five really important activities that we are encouraging and supporting in the SmartStart programme:
TalkingTalk is not just important for a child’s speech and language development, but is also critical to their cognitive and emotional growth. When adults listen to children with...
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20 Aug 2016
During the conceptualisation phase of SmartStart (in 2014), we commissioned a literature review on research relating to early learning programmes and parenting interventions. While the purpose of this review was primarily to inform our conversations around the design of SmartStart’s early learning programme and curriculum, we think that it is a useful reference tool for others working in the field of ECD and early learning, and who are designing programmes to engage and include parents.
The review is by no means exhaustive. It offers signposts and insights into good practice, key themes and areas of emerging consensus, rather than definitive conclusions. Although the document is quite long, much of this is quotes from the literature and the original discussion is fairly short....
Get involved! Find out more
To find out more about SmartStart and how you can get involved, contact the SmartStart office on 010 595 3902 or email us at hello@smartstart.org.za.