Maharat Center for Cognitive and Skills Development held an open day function for 400 children here Thursday. The event, which was entitled “Maharat Day for reading, fun and joy”, was held as a commemoration of the 13th anniversary of the center. The children spent the day involved in a number of different activities including reading, smart and edu-games, sand art, drawing, face painting, magic shows, storytelling, glass coloring, art photography, foam fun games and raffles. Hala Khogair, Maharat's media relations coordinator, said that the center holds functions to raise the community's awareness of the importance of Maharat's services and programs especially those for children with special needs. “We invited different government and private organizations to take part in this remarkable day. The sponsors of the open day provided a mobile library to encourage children to read. Children from different charitable societies took part in the activities along with their peers from the community, Khogair said. She also noted that this year's open day witnessed the generous participation of students from the Dental College in King Abdul Aziz University who conducted different awareness sessions and games on dental health. “Reading was one of the most important of the day's activities as our community suffers from a lack of interest in reading and in dealing with books in general. Many experts attribute this problem to the spread of electronic entertainment equipment and other technological recreation which may be distracting children as well as adults from reading. We must not lose the taste for reading a book and holding it in our hands,” Khogair said. Hadeel Al-Abbasi, a Saudi woman who writes stories for children, visits schools to hold storytelling sessions for children in Arabic and sometimes in English. “I came to Maharat center in order to meet children and conduct some storytelling sessions. One of my stories called “I have two houses” deals with children living with stepmothers or stepfathers,” Abbasi said. — SG __
