Johannesburg Update: Building Mandela Bridge
As part of the Skate and Create Community Mapping curriculum, the students in Johannesburg built their own Mandela Bridge and learned about road safety. The educational craft project showed the students that it was possible to build bridges with their own two hands!
As part of the Skate and Create program, our students take part in a range of activities from cooking to art, and now building! This week they made a miniature version of Mandela Bridge. This is the largest cable bridge in South Africa, named after, Nelson Mandela of course. It is located in downtown Johannesburg and is an iconic structure locally and globally! In honour of it and Nelson Mandela, our students decided to build a version of it out of wood and string. It was a very hands on activity and the students were able to build it quite accurately! One student, Dziko*, really enjoyed the task at hand:
“In the classroom we have been learning about structures, architecture, traffic safety, mapping and the community. My favorite lesson this year was when we built Mandela bridge. We learned how to stick things together and how to use a hammer safely and we also learned the history of Mandela Bridge. In traffic safety we learnt that if it’s dark and you are not wearing reflectable material the drivers on the road will not be able to see you and you might get knocked over. We learnt about Mandela — about when he got out of jail and his struggles. We then built Mandela bridge!’’
Our students are enjoying all the new lessons they are learning through the Global Citizenship theme (which runs all year!). The Educators are always coming up with new lessons and fun activities for the classes so that the students continue to learn through play. What will be next?
*Name changed in line with Child Protection Policy.
