Our FAB Extensions Project, funded by the Postcode Neighbourhood Trust and a grant from Local Giving, was launched in March 2021 following the success of our Family Activity Boxes project (FABs) during the first COVID-19 lockdown (you can read more about this here)

 

Resources

Our FAB Extensions Project, with family literacy and social inclusion at its core, is designed to support local schools’ work with multi-lingual learners, engaging their families through loaning, and interacting with, a range of fun and stimulating kinaesthetic, literacy and oracy focused activities.  The resources include dual language books, educational games, puzzles and activities primarily focused on literacy.

 

Global Libraries 

Another exciting development with our FAB Extensions Project, is working with schools to create a ‘Global Library’ within their school libraries.  This involves making the library more diverse by including books by writers from around the world, and books featuring culturally diverse characters, in order to broaden children’s knowledge of different countries and cultures and to ‘bring the world into our schools’. Swindon is a very culturally diverse town, and we believe that it is extremely important for children to see themselves in the books they have around them. Therefore, we encourage schools to include books with diverse positive role models with whom children can identify.

 

Future of FABS!

We have received excellent feedback from the primary schools we are currently working with and are looking forward to developing this project with many more and working with pre schools & Secondary schools in the future. The children have  been engaging with the resources we've provided and the school community of welcoming people from around the world to their school. Two of our schools, Westlea Primary and Drove Primary School have created wonderful displays to show what ‘Welcome’ means in their school as well as Global Libraries.

We are looking forward to bringing the FAB Extension Project to many more of our local schools. If you would like to find out more, please contact our FAB! Coordinator, Stella - [email protected]