Learning outdoors for children of the favelas

This year has had an unusual start for all of us - as we stay put for quarantine, we are working on detailing our work for this school year with two new schools! Last year we focused mostly on practical environmental learning journeys with practical activities such as trails and treasure hunts, a regenerative culinary workshop and mindfulness excercises. This year we are adding a new component to our curriculum: art therapy! 

Our pedagoge and resident art coordinator have been taking lessons on art therapy and artistic expression to formulate a workshop for the children to connect with nature and express the feeling through painting, mosaic and modelling. We will focus on using natural and recycled elements to show children how their creative outlet can beautify spaces and care for their environment. 

Previously, we had worked with children of the community decorating public spaces such as plazas, school murals and other infrastructure - this has proven to be a children's favorite so it was naturally time to incorporate it to our in-campus learning journeys!

We will keep you posted as things go back to normal and we can begin our work. In the mean time, stay safe and as always, we extend you a sincere thank you for your support! 

Warm wishes, 

This year, worked with the Mariana Nunes municipal school in the neighboring community of Barreiro. Over the course of the semester, we worked with the honor roll students with visits to the school teaching about the Atlantic Rainforest and conservation of its biodiversity, through a series of games and excercises such as theater of the oppressed. 

This december, we closed the project receiving the 30 student class for an environmental learning journey where we did everything from a tour of our prototypes, to meditation and art! The children got to understand the cycle of nature with our interactive your in the organic garden, chicken coup, tree nursery and cuisine workshop. As always, one of the big favorites of the day was playing treasure hunt in the bamboo forest.

We hope to work with the school again next year! Thank you to our donors that helped us give a new perspective to the local children of their environment. 

October 12th is Children's Day in Brazil, and as every year since SINAL's inception, we will host children from the local community as well as from the Julio Otoni Community Center, a partner organization in a favela in Rio. This coming Friday 11th, we will receive 30 children and are preparing the environmental learning journey! including an educational trail to a spring, a home-sourced desserts workshop with our ecochef, and a wildlife animal protection activity with a partner biodiversity protection NGO! 

As we have had presence for 8 years in the valley, we and our partners have been able to see several indicators of biodiversity coming back. We are very happy and conscious that it is now time to double our efforts offering a safe, fun and educational approach to nature to the children that we hope will grow up to be its stewards. 

We will post photos and videos of the event, so stay tuned to our social media @sinaldovale! In the meantime, we cannot be more grateful for the support of our donors, you continue to enable us to show in a fun way, how it is important to care for nature as she cares for us!

Here is a photo of a previous learning journey with our friend Recyclon!

With our last report we introduced Patricia, the pedagogue teaching the children at SINAL. She is still working every Monday afternoon with the children on topics following the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals SDGs.

A few weeks ago they started to talk about children and animal rights. She asked the pupils what they thought could be the rights of children. Each of them drew what they thought were their rights. The one right all of them drew in common, was the right to play! How lucky they always get a fifteen minute break where Patricia plays with them. Afterwards they started a discussion, because the kids, who are seven to ten-year-olds, realized there are children who are not able to pursue their rights. “This really got to me”, Patricia says,” when the children heard about the right of having enough food and they looked up at me and said:’ But there are children who don’t have any food!’ Bringing to their after school session what they had learned in class.” Another discussion was started when they learned about the right of having animals but that they had to respect the rights of the animals, too. “It was the first time they heard about animal rights.”

From the animal rights the classes went on to the topic of animals in English. Together with Vivian, the intern at SINAL and their English teacher, they created a memory game drawing the cards themselves and then writing the animals’ or plants’ names in English on one of the pairs of cards and in Portuguese on the other. After these two hours of first SDG-based learning and then the nature based English lessons both teachers and students enjoy a healthy snack. Since winter has started to arrive at SINAL these snacks have shifted from banana ice cream to granola with milk from our own cows! Afterwards, they all clean up the space they used and walk home.

Additionally, we want to inform you about the July bonus day - Donations over 100US$ made on July 18th will be matched by GlobalGiving! So bring some friends together and help us provide a space for children where they can learn about and reconnect to nature.

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We are happy to announce that this year we welcomed on board our pedagogue, Patricia! She has started a teaching program for the children of SINAL based on the Sustainable Development Goals, set by the United Nations. She adapts SDG-related subjects to the context of this urban community within the rainforest. In class she uses activities from the "teatro do oprimido", a theatrical method, that unites exercises, games and theatrical techniques to learn and express oneself. Her first activity was to show the students, who are between the ages of seven to ten, the organic garden we are maintaining on the SINAL property and express how they felt standing in it, posing as a statue, or through paintings. The second topic was animal treatment. The students were asked to build a bird's nest, learning that birds need time and patience to built their houses. The aim was to sensitize the children to deconstruct the common practice of playing with the nests and eggs they find. The children enjoyed the exercise so much that they ended up making birds nests during their breaks throughout the following weeks! They even put their own nests up in the trees for birds to use them.

Links:

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