With the spread of Covid-19 pandemic came to an ease, Ning'er County has lifted the restrictions and has returned life to normal. In order to provide a comfortable learning and living environment for the children in the HPP preschool classes covered by the “One Village, One Preschool and Pre-primary Class turns into Preschool” project in Ning'er County, our project team carried out various environment creation activities in accordance with the project service center and upon confirmations from local education bureau. These activities included creations of themed play corners, indoor and outdoor decorations, homemade outdoor toys, etc.

This week, our project team went to the preschool classes located in Ming’an, Xinping, Sanqiutian and Duanjin. The team worked together with POF teachers for the classroom environment creations. This time the creations were mainly improvements to what had been done previously, in order to bring the classrooms to a new level of standardization and function.  

Among those POF classes, Duanjin and Sanqiutian POF class are located in same township. The leaders of the township central school assigned two teachers from the central preschool, two teachers from Duanjin preschool and the project members to help Sanqiutian preschool to do the environment creations.

Considering the children's development, the team used cartoon images to decorate the whole area. Then they used the "Art Zone" and the "Construction Zone" to replace the previous “Exhibition Corner of Works” which was a bit messy. For children's artworks, a new "Artwork Displaying Area" was re-arranged for children to place their artworks and paintings.

For several POF classes, the team added themed play corners which they didn’t have previously, and used a unified theme for decoration. During the creation, the team members used natural materials such as bamboo and tree branches which were commonly seen in the village to build the overall framework of the corner. For "reading corner”, the team focused on creating a comfortable environment, by laying a comfortable carpet and putting two lovely pillows so that the children would have a cozy reading area. The team also added storage boxes for those scattered toys. By doing this the entire environment became more tidy and organized.

In Duanjin Preschool, the team focused on creating an outdoor playground for the children. Our project staff and the teachers used wooden piles, ropes and other materials to build “Chinese Plum Blossom Piles”, climbing nets and ladders on the open space outside the preschool.

In following weeks, the project team will go to other POF classes such as Gantian and Nakeli, to carry out environment creation activities. Due to the limited time, transport and resources, the team cannot cover all the POF classes. However, they will guide the POF teachers to develop the environment creations of their own preschool to a better level.

Project Brief：

“One Village, One Preschool and Pre-primary Class turns into Preschool” project is a preschool education pilot project of Yunnan Provincial Education Department. In hoping to transform the existing pre-primary school class to independent preschool, and establish preschool in large administrative villages, the project strive to gradually achieve the education layout of “One County, One Demonstration Kindergarten; One Township, One Public Kindergarten; One Village, One Preschool” in the province. Ning'er County is one of the pilot counties. After preliminary communications and field visits, The Federation for Associations Connected to the International Humana People to People Movement (Switzerland) Yunnan Representative Office worked together with the Ning'er County Education Bureau, and assisted the Education Bureau in training those teachers hired locally, mainly by providing knowledge of preschool education, supervisions on curriculum management and teaching techniques , in order to eventually improve the quality of teaching. 

The project is sponsored by Beijing Tianheng Anke Group Co. Ltd and HPP China.

The project is a cooperation between The Federation for Associations Connected to the International Humana People to People Movement (Switzerland) Yunnan Representative Office and Ning’er County Education Bureau.

This article only represents the views of the author's, not that of the sponsor's.