Focus

Learning Through Play Parenting Programme

The Dudley Grant Memorial Trust (DGMT) has been involved in parenting programmes with the Ministry of Education, Early Childhood Unit through the Early Childhood Resource Centres for the last six (6) years. In 2008, DGMT started working with the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre in Toronto, Canada on a parenting programme called ‘Learning Through Play (LTP)’. The main purpose of the programme is to improve the health and well being of children and their long term mental health development.

 The objectives of the LTP programme are: (a) to provide parents with information on the healthy growth and development of young children (birth to 6 years), focussing on the physical, intellectual, linguistic, and socio-emotional aspects of development; (b) to teach parents play activities that enhance child development; and c) to promote attachment through active parental involvement in their child's development.

The programme: (a) emphasises parent-child play as a means to promote learning and attachment; (b) uses a hands-on approach that emphasizes learning through demonstration and practice; (c) utilizes a simple, low-literacy, pictorial format that presents information about successive stages of child development; and (d) is culturally sensitive with respect to illustrations, language, concepts, and values.

The Learning Through Play (LTP) resources are pictorial "calendars" that depict the successive stages of child development, along with brief descriptions of simple play activities that show parents what they can do to promote healthy child development. They are called "calendars" because parents literally hang the materials on the walls in their homes to allow for easy reference.