Helping Rural Xhosa children become literate!

The Directresses at Ncinci Ones Montessori have been keeping very busy the last period.  They have hosted two Parent Workshops in the past five months and the mama's of the children are really enjoying the workshops, as they are learning so many things that they can or make with their children.

The Directresses have attended two Professional Development Workshops, two Wild Coast ECD COP (Early childhood development Code of best practice) workshops, Forum meetings and First Aid training.  All these activities have positively added to the Directresses knowledge and practices. There were theory and practical components at all the trainings.   

In May this year, we experienced huge rainfall in a short period of time; the area surrounding our preschool was completely flooded, but we were blessed and had no major problems.

At school, the children are happy and working with a variety of materials in the environment.  Four of the children are reading isiXhosa, their mother tongue.  

Our garden is providing some lovely vegetables which the children enjoy at lunchtime.  The children were visited by the Wellness Wagon, which has a Sister who checks the children's weight and height and provides them with de-worming tablets and Vitamin A drops. The children brush also brush their teeith daily at school, after they have had breakfast.

Five of the children will be graduating at the end of this year and going to Grade 1 at the local Government school next year. There will be ELOM (Early Learning Outcomes Measures) assessments done during the last term of the year.

The staff are all happy and doing well and the children are all blossoming :-)

Enkosi! (Thank you)

Our year has been going very well at Ncinci Ones Montessori and we have had lots of visitors at our school too.

We have 31 young Xhosa children attending and each and every one of them is developing to their own needs. The older children are enjoying teaching the new young ones how to do activities and there is alot of "children teaching children" taking place.

Our veggie garden is back on track after the big summer rains and we enjoyed eating mielies (corn) from our garden.  We have planted carrots and spinach now.

We have hosted two Parent Workshops this year and the mama's are enjoying learning new things at these workshops.

Just before we closed for the Easter holidays, we had an Easter Egg hunt in the garden. This was a first for the new children and everyone had great fun looking for their Easter treats.

At the end of April, our one Directress went to Stellenbosch to the Sustainability Institute to attend the South African National Montessori Conference.  She thoroughly enjoyed the experience and said that she learnt "too much".

Our newly qualified Directresses are both doing an amazing job in the indoor environment and our Cook and Gardener are keeping our children healthy.

Thank you everyone and stay well.

The Ncinci Ones Montessori Team