Swiss missionaries teach new techniques to day care workers in Mt Prov

By Gabriel Moguet

SABANGAN, Mountain Province – Day care teachers here have become more effective in teaching children after two Swiss nationals recently taught them “new techniques.”

Both lay missionaries of Bethlehem Mission, Melania Nansoz and Pia Maria Fleishin held a crash course on the matter March 30 and 31.

Nansoz is at present based in Lagawe, Ifugao, while Fleischlin is based in Sabangan where the latter is fondly called by local folks “Miss Pia.”

Councilor Ernesto Bondad, Sangguniang Bayan chairman on social services, said the 2-day training was realized by a mere luck.

“It just happened that we invited Miss Pia in one of our daycare visitations with active Welfare and Development personnel and Miss PIa said that she had a compatriot based at Lagawe who is a teacher by profession and really good at what she does,” he said. “So I suggested if we could tap her for a 2-day training to teach our daycare workers and that’s it, we have it and am very much grateful it was conducted for free.”

Nansoz taught daycare workers to make puppets out of recycled materials because according to her, daycare children can easily catch their lessons through puppetry.

“You can easily catch their attention and you can easily communicate with them,” she said. “Four to five years old is the ‘talking stage’ of children and you can encourage them to talk with visual aids and through games, so tiring but it is fun.”

The daycare teachers who were so attentive, said they enjoyed the training and were thankful of the new techniques taught them.

They said that they were eager to try the new techniques including puppets they made during the training out of recycled materials.

They also promised to make more puppets as their visual aids because children can easily get tired of seeing drawings from books.