Help Dora Help

This week I had the opportunity to interview the Nick Jr. presenter Helena Dowling. As some of you may already be aware Helena presents Nick Jr.’s Wake Up World-The early morning Pre-school TV segment featuring favourite shows such as Peppa Pig, Humf, Ben and Holly and Dora the Explorer. Helena is currently the face of the Help Dora Help campaign,supported by The Princes Foundation for Children and the Arts which aims to provide much needed funds to support a Pre-school setting. This campaign is the first of its sort and there are plans to do similar campaigns in the future.

To qualify the Pre-school setting must first register their details with the campaign .(which is a very easy and straightforward process)

All you have to do is:

1. Fill in the pre-school setting details online (See Nick Jr. link above)

2. Once they receive the discovery and learning activity pack-They must then as a group encourage the children to work together to create a poster of Boots,Dora’s faithful sidekick.

Easy peasy-don’t you think?

The activity pack that will be sent out will encourage all area’s of the Early Years Curriculum to be explored by way of 6 individual session plans. (All very carefully and professionally put together by The Phoenix consultancy)

A panel of judges including members of the Princes Foundation and Nick Jr. staff will create a shortlist from all entries and they will be left with just 5 Pre-school settings.

The 5 setting that are shortlisted will be filmed by Nick Jr. and there will be a public vote deciding who will receive the top prize. The campaign will award 1 very lucky Pre-School setting one main award of up to £20,000 ,there will also be 4 runners-up.

Dora the Explorer was chosen as the focal character for the campaign due to her recognition by children as being a fun way to learn new idea’s and to explore different problem solving activities and situations. How many 3-5 year old’s don’t know who Dora is? As part of the campaign Helena has visited a Pre-school setting to see how they are using the Activity pack with their children. Helena saw an outside area that had been set up with a Space theme using a Gazebo with lots of pictures of Rockets the children that had made this made a big impression with Helena and the Nick Jr. team.

The campaign is nearing the end of it’s first stage and all entries from Pre-school settings must be received no later than the 22nd July. The voting and winning stages will be publicised on Nick Jr.