“Summer Vacation”

What are you some of your favorite memories of summer vacation? Sidewalk challk? Going to camp? Hanging out at the local swimming pool or park? Playing in the neighborhood? Our students in town often get bored during their vacation time. There are not a lot of options in our small town, but we have seen them playing in the street with others, hanging out at the park, and, of course, watching TV. We decided that this was all fun and games, but we wanted to set-up something structured for our students to do during the day. We played around with a lot of ideas, a library program with the awesome library that Davie and Sarah helped fund for the high school, a sports program, a reading program or an English program. As often happens in volunteer work, our ideas started out big and then eventually were funneled down to a a 2 day a week, variety program. We did some reading together, learned origami, had a special guest teach us how to make books (thanks, Clare!), wrote thank-you notes to people in town, did a playground games day in the park and finally had a movie day with a montón of popcorn!

December and January are the between school-year break, like our summer break in the states. The school year runs with the calendar year (makes a lot of sense!) Our vacation program ran 2 days a week through the month of January and we had a blast getting to know the kids in our town. We go back to school on February 8th and we are feeling excited and refreshed about our work and relationships here in 2016! 

Here are a few photos of our time with our vacation programming:

Book making in the library at the school

Thanks, Clare, for teaching our kiddos how to make and write a book

Mi Gemela (My twin) – Alison

The final products!

We talked about gratitude and thankfulness and wrote thank-you notes to some people in town (including the mayor’s office, the bus drivers, the health center, teachers, and the store owners/workers)

Delivering our thank you notes in town

Some of the kids in our group after delivering cards to the teachers

Teaching Origami

A blurry shot—but movie day in our front sala. We watched Buscando por Nemo (Finding Nemo). Not pictured…the popcorn all over the floor