POLOKWANE – Empty Toy Box Education empowers staff working in Early Childhood Development (ECD) to enrich little one’s learning experience.
With a slogan like ‘Learning through play the recycled way’, Empty Toy Box Education encourages the use of recycle material to teach.
As founder, Shayne Moodie combined her passion for education with her passion for reducing waste and recycling to create learning material.
It all started in 2017 when she was approached by the Rotary Club of Polokwane to assist with the training for staff at Golden Future Crèche and Pre-school in Magofe.
She decided if she was going to develop the skills of six ECD staff members, she could just as well open the project to anyone that could benefit from it.
Initially, the plan was to run the project for a year with the assistance of Elvy Nkhawana, but the project was so well-received that it continued to grow.
Moodie is driven by her knowledge that children do not choose the situations they are born into.
“Nobody chooses to struggle financially. What we do know for sure is that the formative years of a child greatly impact their success as adults and that learning through play and playful learning, executive functioning skills are developed. Afforded the opportunity to play, children begin to automatically master these skills without them being discretely taught and it is these skills that produce highly functioning adults. Not everybody has all the smart resources that are flooding the educational market, but we have junk and creativity,” she said.
The project is open and accessible to anyone that is interested – from parents, caregivers and grandparents, although they encourage ECD practitioners to attend. Next year, big things are in the pipeline.
Limpopo will have five lead facilitators that will begin to guide five assistant facilitators. The project will also extend to the Mossel Bay area in the Western Cape.
Moodie has a extensive history in teaching and has taught locally and internationally, in private and government schools, tutor centres as well as special needs classrooms.
“Although I studied in South Africa, I was fortunate enough to specialise in the UK in ECD and Learning through Play and worked as part of the committees for UK educational projects such as ‘Letters and Sounds’ and Early Years Conferences for teachers,” she explained.
Over the years, she has been involved in many educational outreach projects including Care for Education which is a non-profit organisation and partner of the Lego Foundation.
The well-being and involvement of active, learning children is at the centre of everything she does, she concluded.
