We’ve received final feedback from Family Action on our Stronger Communities Fund grant awarded in 2022.
Their project, in partnership with Phonics Bear, provided phonics courses to pre-school children aged 3-4 years old in three Children's Centres in Wythenshawe.
The Phonics Bear workshops ran successfully in three 12-week sessions throughout Summer 2022, Autumn 2022, and Spring 2023, providing pre-school children with a head-start in school. With long waiting lists for NHS Speech and Language Therapy services, Phonics Bear sessions helped families in Wythenshawe access vitally important free classes.
Julie Philbin, Children's Centre Locality Manager, shared her positive feedback on the project, highlighting the multi-sensory learning approach used in the classes that involved messy play, mark-making in a variety of materials, art and craft activities, letter recognition games, dancing, singing, and other activities.
Family Action mentioned how the children engaged well and progressed week by week with their letter sound knowledge and repetition. The Phonics Bear classes also helped boost the children's social skills and confidence, especially for those who did not regularly attend nursery, and the activities helped them to learn and remember what they were being taught.
The project's impact was significant, particularly for children whose speech was delayed due to Covid-19 and lockdown. The activities highlighted a lot of speech and language delays, which improved enormously through them attending the classes and mixing with both adults and other children. The classes also helped enhance their literacy skills and fine motor skills.
The parents who attended the classes gave excellent feedback, and one little girl in particular who had been seeing a speech and language therapist showed significant improvement after attending the classes! Parents told us how their children eagerly looked forward to attending the classes every week, highlighting the program's success.
Quotes from happy parents!
"We have been attending Ruth’s classes for quite a few weeks now. My son keeps on waiting for Tuesdays so that he can go to his phonics bear class and meet Ruth there and enjoy all the singing, dancing and learning. She puts so much of thoughts in each activity which are fun to do with a great learning. Highly recommend Ruth’s classes, Thanks!!"
"Absolutely love Ruth’s class, she really does put lots of thought into each class and keeps the children engaged! Phonics bear has really helped Rosie’s speech and she really enjoys it! Can’t recommend enough!!"
"Thankyou for giving me the opportunity and chance to help and show users in the Children's Centre what I do and provide help to the families."
We Love MCR Charity is proud to have supported Family Action and Phonics Bear in promoting early childhood learning and development in Wythenshawe, helping local Children's Centres continue provide excellent learning opportunities to local children!
