The future generation must gain knowledge too. They should learn how to prevent diseases, especially malaria. Participating in the Malaria Explorer Club (MEC) combines preserving children’s mental, physical, and psychological health as well as educating them about malaria in a fun way. Therefore, they will enjoy participating in the club and will feel responsible for preventing malaria. Below is an instruction that describes a task, paired with an input that provides further context. Write a response that appropriately completes the request.
Understanding Malaria Through Play
Before engaging in their task they should understand why malaria needs to be understood in the first place. Malaria is caused by mosquitoes and is a potentially fatal disease. For young children, education on malaria may consist of learning how the parasite is propagated, the significance of prevention, and what they can do to keep themselves and others safe.
Fun Activities for the Malaria Explorer Club
Malaria Adventure Quest
- Objective: Educate children about malaria prevention in an engaging way.
- Activity: Create a treasure hunt or adventure quest where children find clues and complete tasks that relate to malaria prevention (eg, go and find ‘hidden’ bed nets; mark all the areas where mosquito species breed; answer questions about malaria symptoms and prevention).
- Materials: Clues, maps, small prizes, and educational information about malaria.
- How to Play: Split kids into teams, give them the first clue, and then they get one clue leading to another spot where they learn something about malaria. After each checkpoint, they get a stamp or a sticker in their explorer booklet, and the final clue will lead them to a treasure chest containing tchotchkes to be used as malaria-prevention ammunition (stickers, mosquito-repellent bracelets… the sky is yours!)
Mosquito Craft Workshop
Kids will learn about mosquitoes and malaria via hands-on crafts.
- Activity: Design a craft workshop in which the children build their mosquito models out of craft supplies such as cut-out paper, markers, and pipe cleaners; they can educate the children about the various parts of a mosquito, and how each part contributes to malaria transmission.
- Materials: Colored paper, markers, pipe cleaners, glue, scissors, and craft sticks.
- How to Play: Give a quick lesson about mosquito anatomy and how the insect spreads malaria. Then, allow children to create their models. Wouldn’t be fun if they had to do all that guesswork from the beginning? Encourage them to neatly write labels on the paper wings that describe each part and its function. Display the crafts in a ‘Mosquito Museum’ where kids can share what they’ve learned.
Bed Net Relay Race
- Objective: Reinforce the message that the use of bed nets is an effective malaria prevention method, in a novel way.
- Activity: Start a relay race where children must use a bed net to perform tasks such as getting across an ‘obstacle course’ or carrying ‘protected resources’ safely from place to place.
- Materials: Bed nets, cones or markers for the obstacle course, and small items to carry.
- Game Instruction: Divide the children into teams, and then race them through the obstacle course carrying a bed net. The teams must work together to complete the course, and the bed net must survive the course in good condition. The team that crosses the finish line first with a fully intact bed net is the victor.
Malaria Bingo
- Objective: Reinforce knowledge about malaria through a fun and interactive game.
- Activity: Bingo. Students prepare Bingo cards using malaria terminology and facts. In turns, another student calls out the term and the students must mark them on their card. The first to complete a row or column wins.
- Materials: Bingo cards with malaria-related terms, markers, or chips.
- How to Play: Give one Bingo card and one marker per child and call out malaria-related terms, such as ‘mosquito’, ‘bed net’, ‘symptoms’, and ‘prevention’. When a child completes a row or a column, he cries out ‘Bingo!’, and he wins a small prize.
Mosquito Repellent Recipe Lab
- Objective: Teach kids about natural mosquito repellents and encourage hands-on learning.
- Activity: A ‘lab’ session where children make natural mosquito repellents using ingredients that can be found in the kitchen – lemon, eucalyptus oil, and lavender.
- Materials: Recipe ingredients for insect repellant, mixing bowls, spoons, and small containers for the finished product.
- Play: How to Play: Tell your children how mosquitoes hunt us at night. In addition, inform them that people have discovered natural materials that can repel mosquitoes. Together, prepare bug-repellent recipes for your children to mix up on their own. Give them small containers to take home their dupa! activities. Allow your children to follow these instructions: Tie the ends of the pantyhose together and hang them on a rope. Add Water and Add liquid soap. Mix as you go! Take the pantyhose downDon’t forget to take your dupa! home! Explain to your children: Dupa! is a natural mosquito repellent. The oils in the plants make your skin smell funky and keep mosquitoes away. Just like mosquito nets or insecticides, your dupa! can help keep mosquitoes from biting you at night.
Interactive Storytime
- Objective: Use storytelling to convey important messages about malaria prevention.
- Home: allow youngsters to develop a story with regular pests such as mosquitoes, lice beans, or even bedbugs, only to conquer them by taking precautions against malaria. Paired with an activity related to the story, this would be an excellent follow-up for children of any age.
- Materials: Storybooks about malaria or a script for a custom story, props for role-playing.
- How to play: Pick a story on malaria, including one that is localized with high prevalence and treatments, read it to the listeners, and ask children to act out different characters in the story. After reading the story, discuss the key takeaways and how children would relate this to their lives.
“Bug Hunt” Educational Game
- Objective: Teach children about mosquito habitats and prevention strategies in an engaging way.
- Activity: Organise a ‘bug hunt’ where children hunt for hidden ‘mosquitoes’ or clues to find around their area; while they do so, teach them about mosquitoes and prevention.
- Materials: Small toy mosquitoes or printed images, fact sheets about mosquito habitats.
- What to do: Hide mosquito toys or pictures around a starting point. Hand out information sheets on mosquito breeding places and malaria prevention, and ask children to hunt for each mosquito or clue, reading a fact out loud each time they find it. Reward every correct answer with a sticker or small prize.
The Malaria Explorer Club provides a collection of games, crafts, and stories to make learning about malaria enjoyable for children. With the onslaught of important health messages and information, it is essential to incorporate fun activities into learning about as serious a matter as malaria. By learning about malaria through games, children can learn valuable disease-preventative messages through play. Crafts provide an outlet for parents and children to work together, fostering a sense of caring and diligence that becomes useful when children learn about malaria prevention such as sleeping under a mosquito net.
But if you transform them into activities that are relevant to children, while still anticipating people’s world views, making them fit with local realities and cultural expectations, then a project such as the Malaria Explorer Club can use games to both educate children and engage them as full participants in malaria prevention.
