Koala Kids Enrichment Center

Thirty-four children and four teachers from Koala Kids Enrichment Center had an exciting day at the Friends' Outreach premises last Friday, the 22nd of July.

The cute kids came in a big bus with Koala Kids' Business Director, Mr Saw Leng Syn,at 9.00am and were welcomed by the committee and volunteers of the Friends of the Penang Botanic Garden Society. 

The children, all below 7 years of age, were sweet and extremely well-behaved. Thanks to their teachers, they all lined up quietly before separating into two groups to participate in two educational activities - Seed Safari and Worm Hotel. 

Those children going on the Seed Safari, conducted by Friends' Vice-President Dr. Liew Kon Wui, were given vests to wear for identification purposes before setting off on a little trek to look at trees, plants and their seeds.

They were taught about how different kinds of plants produced different kinds of seeds and shown a variety of seeds. The children were given little specimen collection bottles of their own so that they could collect any of the different plant parts, flowers or seeds that caught their eye during their safari.

Their little adventure concluded with a craft session at Outreach as they were taught how to make collages from seeds and the various leaves and flowers they had collected during their walkabout. 

The children had a fun time gumming various kinds of seeds to make pictures of flowers, butterflies, snakes, and leaves. The more creative ones added small leaves and flowers from their specimen bottles.

The other group learnt all about worms. They were taught about how to find worms, what worms liked to eat, where they lived and the different parts of a worm.

The children also learnt how useful worms were to the environment before being given the opportunity to handle some worms of their own. 

The adorable little children handled their worms quite fearlessly and had a fun time helping to build a worm hotel step by step. In fact, some of the children who had been a little fearful of worms at the beginning, ended up asking for extra worms to put into their little worm hotels.

In the process, they learnt about creating an ecologically viable environment for their worms to survive. 

After a short break, the two groups switched places and enjoyed their second round of activities for the morning. Their fun nature awareness programme ended at 1pm when the bus came for them.