'Education plays a critical role in shaping the child's behaviour towards the environment.'
Teaching kids about saving water from an early age is bound to make a difference in the long run. To this end, the department of agriculture rural development, land and environmental affairs has developed a Water Programme that encourages kids to save water and communicates this in a fun, interesting way.
“The rational was based on the premise that early childhood environmental education plays a critical role in shaping the child’s attitudes, values, and patterns of behaviour towards the environment and that fresh water is an essential resource for all living organisms,” Andiswa Makam from the department says.
The Water Programme starts young: preschool learners in rural areas are targeted through their schools. The programme comes in the form of a teaching pack that is provided to the teachers or the environmental eco officers.
The teaching packs are made up of appropriate, age-specific communications, such as colouring-in pages and easy to learn rhymes and songs. The packs also contain practical solutions that kids can learn and implement at the school and in the school gardens.
Kids learn environmentally friendly ways to use and preserve water such as not watering their gardens during the heat of the day. For home gardening, they learn to make mulch, how to use natural repellents and even how to grow and run a pyramid food garden that needs less water.
The guide also shows kids how to make their own watering cans — this therefore dissuades the use of hosepipes — and how to make drinking cups that can be used in the home.
As part of the country’s overall emphasis on water education, the programme linked up with the revised National Curriculum, ensuring that the teaching is directly beneficial to a learner’s schooling.
“Access to the programme was made by maximising service delivery to all areas, including deep rural areas and learners with special education needs. The participating schools were encouraged and motivated through a competition phase that was initiated by the department,” says Makam.
The benefits are massive — and even more so when kids pass the information on to parents and care- givers at home.
At schools, principals have created full gardens to supplement their students’ daily diets and they have noted a marked reduction in the overall water bills. In 2014, all 106 preschools, including Learners with Special Education Needs schools, entered the Water Programme competition. Prizes are awarded for picture colouring in and overall portfolio. Prizes include JoJo tanks, basins, watering cans and free water.
Exxaro Coal Mining has taken note of the programme’s effectiveness and have played a part in aligning and restructuring content to appeal to grade six scholars.