Phonics International

[debbie]

Hi everyone!

Sorry about my absence from the message forum.

I have been off to Turkey for a combined family holiday and to provide a two-day seminar and workshop for a school in Turkey (see the 'Training' forum).

Thank you to my wonderful hosts.

I hope that readers to the forum have had restful and productive holidays if they have, indeed, been able to have a 'summer holiday'.

We are now gearing up to launch the new Early Years Beginners package which I was able to showcase during the training in Turkey. I am pleased to say that the teachers said they liked it very much - so let's hope parents find it equally appealing.

I learnt about the meaning of 'hot' in Turkey and I thought about 'water' a great deal. England seems strikingly green in comparison. I have never really moaned about the rain although I do think I feel more cheerful when the sun is shining. What upsets me is that some countries can have so much rain that it causes disasters like floods - even now India has suffered terrible Monsoon floods which is quite heartbreaking.

Meanwhile, other countries are desperate for rain and there may be none for months and months on end.

Although this is turning out to be rather a serious email - I feel like mentioning the 'water' issue. It is such a precious commodity - but is it properly managed by we human caretakers?

Do we do enough, for example, to support people living in more inhospitable places to enable them to provide for their families and communities?

Do we do enough, for example, to channel water to needy places - and to provide piping for good sanitation?

I have no doubt that massive projects are taking place across the world - but this makes me consider as a teacher what we are doing regarding our educational curriculums to educate the next generation about such fundamental topics.

Hmm.....now I am inspired to find out and yet I hardly have enough hours in the day to manage my own life and work!

If anyone knows first hand of good links to do with water conservation, water sharing, and work in the schools' curriculum of such projects, please post them on this thread for our general interest!

Thank you!
_________________
Debbie Hepplewhite

[poppetsam]

We had a group called One Water come into our school. They were fantastic.....take a look. x

http://www.onedifference.org/uk/water/theissue

[pdwroe]

Theres also a charity called Water Aid, who I'm sure do stuff in schools. I presume they have a website but sorry have no details.
World Vision do sponser a well or something like that in their catalogue. I'm sure google would bring them up pretty quick.
Severn Trent water are pretty good at supplying packs to schools for water topics such as lge water cycle posters etc and do come out to schools, but presumably only to schools within their region so not much good for yours Debbie.
We had a water day at school a few years ago with a carousel of activities based around the theme of water conservation. We did lots of great activities bur the one that stayed with the children most was getting them to fill a bucket of water and carry it across the playground - then explaining that in some countries children have to do this daily and for much further. It seemed to really strike a chord. The children also designed posters to put up near every tap in the school to remind people not to waste water. The best entry from each yr grp was laminated and are still up around the school.
Hope this gives you a few ideas, we had a really great day and raised lots of money for buying wells through world vision or something similar.
The ideas are endless and the teachers got to do things with lots of different children, I just need to persuade them to have a few more days like this.

[pdwroe]

Just found the website, www.wateraid.org surprisingly enough! Got a letter from them this morning which was a bit spooky! Haven't actually looked at the site yet, so don't know what its like.