In the past few years, under an overall initiative called Talk2Thrive, Daniela O'Neill has increasingly engaged in more outreach in the community to help build strong foundations for language in children in fun and informal ways in peer-to-peer, family, school and community settings. Some of these intiatives have involved students she advises and/or students in her courses.
Follow this outreach on Talk2ThriveLab Instagram page
Exciting new grant received to expand our Board Game related activities in the community!
Daniela has received a grant in 2022 from the Lyle S. Hallman Foundation to expand our outreach with board games in the local community. You can read more about the program and the new grant in this article in UWaterloo News
To date, this new outreach has included curating a new board game collection for older 9 to 14 year olds for Kitchener Public Library, expanding Board Game Buddies to 10 WRDSB schools, and developing new board game collections for a variety of community organizations serving families and children.
Recent and Ongoing Initiatives (see each section for detailed information and open-access materials)
- Library
- Working with Kitchener Public Library (KPL), two curated collections of board games were developed to foster language, literacy and social interaction skills and introduce families and children to the wide variety of new types of board games available.
- Young Children's Board Game Collection designed for 2 to 8 year-olds launched in 2021
- Older Children's Board Game Collection designed for 9 to 14+ year-olds launching in 2025
- Working with Kitchener Public Library (KPL), two curated collections of board games were developed to foster language, literacy and social interaction skills and introduce families and children to the wide variety of new types of board games available.
- Schools
- Working with teachers at a local elementary school, theBoard Game Buddies Drop-In Recess Program was first developed by Daniela O'Neill to provide early grade students, many of whom were learning English as a second language, with a fun opportunity to build their language skills in interaction with older students. Board Game Buddies usually takes place during one 20 minute recess time weekly in the school library. This program fosters so much language, social interaction, and laughter! It is amazing to see how much fun and learning can happen in 20 minutes and the children love it! This program has now been brought to 10 more WRDSB schools!
- Community Organizations
- Creating playful learning spaces for children in the city
- Drawing from research and initiatives all around the world, Daniela and her students have been reimagining how spaces within local City of Waterloo and City of Kitchener parks can become richer with playful learning opportunities for young children and families. Students' presentations to city parks staff are available to view in this section.
- This course and its student projects were highlighted in an article in the The Record July 25 2022 Reimagining playgrounds in Waterloo Region
- Museums
- Planet Word Museum, Washington, DC - grand opening September 2020
- Daniela O'Neill is on the Advisory Board of Planet Word and was a primary academic consultant for the First Words exhibit. You can see the First Words exhibit in this PBS Newshour video (June 9, 2022) at minute 1:09.
- Planet Word Museum, Washington, DC - grand opening September 2020
- Canadian Children's Literacy Foundation
- As of Dec. 2022, Daniela O'Neill has joined the Board of Directors at the Canadian Children's Literacy Foundation whose mission is to ensure all children in Canada are equipped with the literacy skills they need to reach their full potential. CCLF was founded in 2017 by Heather Reisman, founder and CEO of Indigo and Chair of the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation, and Heather Munroe-Blum, Chairperson of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.