Recreational activities   Recreational activities give our stars a chance to refresh and relax their minds, body and soul. They do this by singing, dancing, painting, light therapy and music therapy. It is amazing what these activities can do to stimulate a child even more! We believe in only the best and the best is what you will get only at Sterreweg!     Educational activities Die Sterreweg offers educational stimulation to the children. It is not formal education as you will get in mainstream schools but every little bit helps, even if we are just teaching them to write their names, count or draw and name shapes. All these things contribute to who and what they will be at the end of the day! Educational stimulation plays a very big roll in the goal settings of these children, so with repetition and a lot of hard work they will also be able to say one day I DID IT!   2 nutricious meals a day We make sure that all our children get a well balanced meal twice a day. They have breakfast where we give them the healthiest porridge like pro-nutro, weetbix, etc. Sometimes even eggs for the protein and stamina they need.  At lunch time we always make sure that our little stars get enough vegetables, and soon we'll be able to give them some of our own produce form the vegetable garden! Throughout the day they the children are given enough water or Rooibos tea.     Physiotherapy and occupational therapy   This is one of our most important therapies. We have our physio and occupational therapist coming in every tuesday for 3 hours. Physio exercises play a very important role in the day to day living of our children. The muscles of these kids really need everyday massages because we don't want our children to be stiff and unconfortable. We also do refferals to hospitals as far as George and Rooi Kruis Hospital in Cape Town.   Yearly assessments of each child   When a child wants to start at Die Sterreweg it all begins with an assessment done by our Physio and Occupational Therapist. If a child meets our criteria we start to develop goal sheets for him/her. This gives the carers a better idea on what to work on with these children. Once a year the programmes are reviewed and we look whether the child reached some of the goals and where more effort is needed. We don't expect miracles at the centre, but we do want our children to develop in their own way at their own pase. Parents support groups and workshops   We offer parents support groups as well as parent workshops. At these support groups and workshops we sometimes get proffesionals such as educational psychologists or speech and language therapists to facilitate it.  These support groups give the parents the strenght and knowledge needed to continue their day to day life. At the workshops we teach the parents about behavioural management and how to deal with problems. In the future we would like to have more of these workshops!   Awareness events   In the past we didn't do much awareness campaigns and we always concentrated on Casual day in September as our main awareness activity. We now have an awareness programme and we plan our activities according to those special days. Casual day is a day for people with disabilities and it will remain our biggest awareness day of the year. Another International Disability day is celebrated on the 3rd of December each year and we do a lot activities then.  We also have a few days listed on our programme such as: Down Syndrome day Cerebral Palsy week These are just part of our awareness days and we hope to change the mindsets of people through these campaign.   Outreach programs   We offer outreach programmes to the children that unfortunately can't make it to the centre due to various reasons. We go as far as the Crags and Wittedrift, approximately 23 and 20 km from our centre.  We do inform those parents of changes at the centre and the manager Lindelwa Mnweba goes to these houses personally to do home visits. We support these parents with nappies and they go to outings with the rest of the children at the centre. Resource centre   Die Sterreweg serves as a resource centre for the community and especially for people who are involved with special needs children. We provide advisory services to parents, offer training sessions and workshops. If there is anyone out there that needs help they can come to the centre and we will do our best to accomodate them.