Volunteers Holiday Club in Chintsa

Half term holiday fun!

Schools were on holiday earlier this month for one week. With the help of Wild Coast Schools volunteer Amy, we took over Chintsa East school with our fun activities and games for the week.

Making musical instruments from recycled stuff

MONDAY... hosted an eclectic mix of activities for everyone. Kick starting the day was musical instrument making. We recycled old water bottles, and filled them with different materials. I explained how different materials make different sounds and the children had great fun experimenting outside! We also decorated our water bottles using paper and felt-tip pens. Once everybody had finished, we taught the young holiday clubbers how to make the musical instruments really quiet and really loud, before moving on to rhythms!

Next stop we iced our own biscuits, with sweets, which was a tasty treat. The children then chose to get sticky with mosaic making or energetic with drama games. The holiday clubbers left us happy and tired out at the end of the morning.

Decorating our musical instruments

Art lessons with Kate

TUESDAY... We had a special guest visiting us to do an art workshop with the holiday clubbers. Kate from Friends of Chintsa came and the children drew some beautiful pictures. They spent a long time focusing on their pictures, carefully drawing and colouring them in. We put all of the children’s work up on display for everybody to see. Kate also showed some children the wonders of binoculars, which caused a lot of excitement!

Mid morning snack time brought sandwich making. We had a choice of either peanut butter or jam sandwiches. Young African Angel Imvana was great at cutting the sandwiches in half for everyone.

As it was heritage day, some of us took to the stage, singing and dancing enthusiastically. It is safe to say that we celebrated it in style.

Imavana taking charge of sandwich production

Yummy! Peanut butter and jam!

Celebrating Heritage Day

WEDNESDAY... Greensleeves orphanage! We packed up the bus for the day and went off to Di’s home of safety for 30 children. We started the day off with frisbee and ball games, before having a lot of fun with a parachute. The parachute soon became a den, and we read the children stories.

Next stop, swimming in the lake! After donning the swimming costumes, 12 very enthusiastic children ran and jumped into the lake. (Though there were a few hesitant girls and boys who we  paddled with).

“Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic.” The children met our teddy bear, who invited them to his Teddy bear’s picnic. We decorated our picnic plates before making sandwiches for the teddies. Armed with our teddy bears we followed the hidden arrows to our picnic site. The children wolfed down their sandwiches, squash and sweet! Check out the pictures of the picnic on facebook.

After having lunch, we brought our laptops out and ended the afternoon playing computer games!

A sneaky recorder lesson with me!

THURSDAY...  The early bird children, got a sneaky recorder lesson from me. They learnt how to blow into the recorder and make two notes, practise makes perfect! 

Everybody then learnt about caring for our animals in the village! The children drew posters of their favourite animals and wrote about how to care for them. 

Shaun from Friends of Chintsa joined us for a video workshop! He took small groups of children and taught them how to make short videos, it was very popular.

To end our morning, we held a talent show! We had another musical instrument lesson before splitting into groups. The groups were then asked to make a performance using musical instruments, voices and bodies. After creating and rehearsing, we had 5 fantastic performances from all of the holiday clubbers!

Volunteer Amy's team - The Lions! Grrrrr!

FRIDAY ...Ahoy there, it is competition time! Excited holiday clubbers arrived early for our morning of competitions. 9am brought the gardening competition. Ash’s Angels, Charlotte’s giraffes, Phumla’s birds and Amy’s lions were ready to dual with their spades! Round 1 “what’s that?” Teams had the task of identifying the numerous plants in the garden, in a quick fire round.  Ash’s Angels won!

Round 2: Speed gardening. On your marks, get set, go! Each team had 30 minutes to weed, water and mulch their vegetable plot. Ash’s Angels won hands down, with rocks rearranged and extra vegetable plots weeded! Watering was a breeze with the new pipes installed at the school, and the teamwork of everybody.

Round 3: It’s time to put your thinking caps on. Our gardening teams used their imaginations and drawing skills to design their perfect garden. Points were awarded for attention to detail and thinking outside of the box. At the end of the round, the teams presented their gardens to the rest of the children. My team "the giraffes" won with their half water, half vegetable garden creation.

The start of the gardening games

African Angel Indie mulching the veggie patch

Presenting our perfect garden designs

TREASURE HUNT TIME

The children couldn’t contain their excitement to find the buried treasure. Each team was given a map (made by a grade 7 student), which showed the location of 7 clues at the school. After a lot of manic running around, the teams next job was to the answer the questions. “What programme did we use last term to make our maps?” “What’s the older student’s nickname for Charlotte”

Only once they had answered all of these questions, could they then work out the location of the sandpit where the treasure was buried. After a lot of thinking and a clue or two, my team worked out that the treasure was buried in the sandpit! Needless to say, there were smiles all around after they opened up their treasure of prizes.

Alizwa & Erin at holiday club :)

We jam packed a lot into one week… when’s the next holiday club?! I can't wait! :)

Charlotte
Volunteer Co-ordinator - Education Projects