Celebrate Your Child

Times Contributor       

 

The 5 for Life coalition is hosting a Celebrate Your Child educational, and fun, fair at Wheatland Elementary School on May 10. 

The day begins with registration at 9:30 a.m. followed by interactive learning stations from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The stations will include areas on the physical domain, emotional development, social development, and on the health and wellbeing of children, and the final station will be about language and development. The whole event is geared towards kids ages 4 and 5, but younger siblings won’t be turned away. 

“The idea of it will be the parents will go to a station with their kids for 15 or 20 minutes at each station. Then the afternoon opens up for the more active (side of things),” said Lana Lane, chairperson of the 5 for Life coalition. 

In the afternoon there will be a bouncy house, Shots N’ Giggles photo booth, face painting, and a magician; Lane said they are hoping a fire truck and police car will also be there for the kids to check out.  

Between the interactive learning morning and the physically active afternoon, there will be a pancake brunch. 

The day is open to every family with a four and five-year-old child in the county.  There is no fee to attend, but 5 for Life would like people to pre-register if they can. That being said, no one will be turned away. 

The fair is a kick off to the 5 for Life coalition and all they plan to do in the county. The coalition is fairly new, and was formed based off of the results that the Alberta Government found in the Early Child Development Mapping Project for the province. 

“With the identification of those five (development) domains, and the results that we’ve seen, we need to be addressing some of the development issues of our four and five-year-olds. Specifically in Wheatland County the areas of struggle are speech and language, communication and the social development,” said Lane. 

“Our coalition received $50,000 from the Alberta government as the initial grant to get initiatives going to encourage optimal development. If anyone is wanting to see the results of how kids did in Wheatland County the results are on that ECMap site, www.ecmap.ca.”

The terrific two and three-year-old child fair will be in October, and in June, July and August there will be the sports days, which is when people will really be seeing 5 for Life coalition members out and about. 

Lane recently came back from provincial meetings, and even though Alberta is one of the richest provinces, and it is also one of the lowest for how our kids are doing. Over 30 per cent of kids are struggling in areas of development. 

Golden Hills School Division and Christ the Redeemer will be at the fair and will have booths set up to answer questions about what skills are needed to help the kids succeed when they do come to school.