Although Oasis is not a school, it has a variety of educational games and activities to help the children learn and grow. Exposure to books is critical to children as it helps their brains develop and being exposed to language helps the children grow and expand their own language. With a lot of the younger kids who are not yet at the level of reading, they can grow from the books as well. Looking at pictures and answering questions about what is happening or what they see helps them to develop critical thinking skills. They are practicing predicting and imagining, which are early baby steps on the journey of learning to read.
Other baby steps are recognizing letters and letter sounds. In French, children learn to read by syllables. They learn the vowel sounds first and then add in consonants to make syllables that can be combined into words. The older students are used to this method and read the texts easily: p+o=po, s+a=sa, m+i=mi. The younger ones are still learning their letters. One of the teachers at the library created a set of vowels and played a form of memory with these youngsters. “Here is ‘a’. Where is it’s brother?” And the children hurry to match the two a’s together.
When it comes to the consonants the library had a whole set of alphabet letters, but they were all capital letters which is not the most helpful for initial learning. Once again the teachers had to be creative. One of the favourite game activities for the girls is colouring, so they were recruited to help decorate the letters. Now Oasis has a whole alphabet set in lowercase letters that are available to help the younger ones learn the sounds.
These little activities help the kids grow. Although it is informal, some of the younger kids are already showing growth. Knowing they have to ‘read’ in some way before they can plan the games is also a great motivator!
Kerith Trust 