It was reminiscent of a scene from the fairy tale, “The Nutcracker”. Brightly coloured toys and other playthings seemed to have taken on a life of their own as every learner from Grade 4 to 7 at Virginia Preparatory assembled a very individual piece. It was all part of a morning of great activity organised by textile recycling and disability empowerment organisation, Clothes To Good. The aim of the event was to make toys for under-resourced preschools and children living with disabilities and lack of stimulation.
Clothes To Good’s Operations Director, Tammy Greyling, explained: “We collect post-consumer clothing and fashion accessories like fabrics, buttons, zips, fashion accessories and much more. Whatever usable kilogrammes are recycled raise funds which we then use to run our various social impact projects.”
Hayley Norton Smith, administrator at Virginia, described how Clothes To Good had prepared ‘kits’ for each child - pre-loved clothing, buttons, bottle tops and stickers. “The children were shown how to make 4 different toys (one for each grade) which the NPO had designed. The Grade 4s, for example, put together a ‘caterpillar’ toy assembled from shoe laces, cut-up straws, bottle tops and stickers. The budding crafts-persons then set about fashioning the play pieces and had produced around 600 toys by the end of the highly creative session.
Tammy explained that the toys like the caterpillars are used to develop fine motor control, hand-eye co-ordination and early-numeracy skills in young learners. “The designs have been developed by an occupational and a speech therapist so that they can be used to achieve developmental goals while being fun to play with.”
Zanele Nzimakwe of The Domino Foundation’s Early Childhood Development programme, said the NPO, along with Sinakekele Children and The Seed Fun, would a recipient of the day’s output Sinakekele Children and The Seed Fun:”The toys will go to our partnering ECDs which are desperate for toys and educational kits so their children can be stimulated learning through play. We are so grateful to Hayley and Virgina Prep for choosing us as one of the beneficiaries.”
