A goal for educators facilitating childbirth education classes is to offer both active and passive learning activities that both increase confidence and are fun to participate in. Brilliant activities for your birth classes do not have to be hard to create or require a lot of expensive materials. Canva, a free-to-use online graphic design tool, makes it easy and simple to create attractive handouts and teaching tools for use in perinatal classes. Additionally, the easily modifiable, ready-made templates provided to all Canva users really simplifies the process, saving educators valuable time and energy. Today we look at five ideas for using Canva to create learning activities. You can find all the Brilliant Activities for Birth Educators posts here.

Bingo Boards

Bingo is a fun activity that can be used as an ice-breaker at the beginning of class (or anytime) to create community and help participants find things in common with their peers. You can find more details and a specific CBE template here in a previous BABE post. Here are the Canva Bingo Board templates for you to start with.

A - Z Activities

It is fun to challenge families to come up with 26 ideas, each beginning with one letter of the alphabet, for a variety of topics. Canva has some awesome templates to get you started here. Consider asking people to create lists of things that are needed for newborns, positions and coping techniques for labor, great food and drink ideas for the laboring person, ways a partner or support person could help and so much more. This idea can be done individually, or you can create teams who compete against each other to complete their lists.

Word Searches

Word searches are a great way to introduce terms and vocabulary that folks may not always be familiar with. Select words that might be important to know and that they are likely to hear from a care provider during pregnancy, labor/birth and the postpartum period. Consider including definitions so that people can learn as they look for words. Check out the word search templates on Canva here.

Scavenger Hunts

A scavenger hunt can be a fun activity if students are attending virtually from home, and people have access to the contents of their home. In a hospital class setting, you can have them identify important locations that provide necessary services in a hospital facility. It can also be used to line up internet resources that are evidence based and relevant to the needs of a pregnant, birthing or postpartum parent. Use the Canva scavenger hunt templates with themes around postpartum recovery, items to use in labor, healthy foods for pregnancy and so much more. When people are asked to gather items or go to various facility locations, they are also moving their bodies which enhances learning.

Timelines

Use Canva to create a timeline template to help families understand the processes or steps they might see during different parts of their childbearing experience. Consider creating a template that asks families to document the activities that occur when they are first admitted to the hospital, or the steps to an induction or epidural. You might also consider asking them to create a postpartum plan from immediate post-birth through the first six weeks. You can focus on anything that typically happens sequentially during the families’ experience of welcoming a baby. Take a look at some timeline options on Canva here.

Conclusion

With the use of Canva templates and some thoughtfulness on your part, you can easily create attractive and fun activities to share with your childbirth classes. These activities can include your branding, be easily modified and offer families an interesting learning activity to prepare them for welcoming a new baby into their family. If you have not explored Canva or you were not aware of how to use their pre-made templates for your childbirth classes, this is a great time to check out this helpful and time-saving tool.

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