Dia De Visitantes or Visitors Day (Sunday, August 20th)
About four times a year, NPH has a Visitors’ Day where families of the children come to spend a Sunday with the kids. Not all of the children have visitors and the ones that don’t can be pretty sad, so the Volunteers put on a day full of activity to occupy the children that do not have visitors and make them feel special. This last Sunday (2 days ago) was Visitors’ Day on El Rancho and a lot of work went into planning the various activities. We had lined up a couple of hours of field activities like sack races, 3-legged races, and capture the flag, followed by snack times, then chalk art, face painting, giant bubbles, slip n slide, and the ever-present pinata. Lunch time was next with a cake, then movies until 4PM. We expected around 80 kids, but there were less than half that because many of the younger ones were given an activity in the school.
The
volunteers arrived at the ball court around 7:30AM and started playing soccer
(futbol), basketball, and volleyball for a half hour while the kids filtered
in. Around 8AM, the Volunteer Coordinator (Sara) who was our ring-leader for
planning events and the MC, set up the microphone and asked the kids whether
they would rather do the events scheduled or just have free time. The vote was
for free time which just meant that futbol, basketball, and volleyball
continued with the addition of music and karaoke.
I have pictures of Allen playing all the games at one time or another. That guy still has some pretty great basketball moves and is a fine soccer goalie, but the best part was his slip n slide techniques. Yes, the slip-n-slide came out after everyone tired of the other games. It was a hot day and getting wet and soapy was a welcome alternative. As you can see in the photos, you don’t need anything fancy to slip n slide. Some black plastic, a hose, and soap will do the trick. The kids used up a half gallon of soap – luckily it was biodegradable since it all went into the ground. The slip n slide was a big hit with the volunteers, in addition to the kids, with everyone getting pretty wet and soapy.
Allen was also in charge of one of the movies. Our instructions were to find something in Spanish and suitable for the little ones and possibly not on Netflix as they watch movies on Netflix regularly. There were a couple of recommendations (Elemental and The Golden Compass) but we could not get these in Spanish. Unfortunately, we only found that out after purchasing or renting the movie. We were able to get the classic Swiss Family Robinson in Spanish so showed that one instead. I don’t think the kids had seen it before. None of the volunteers had seen or heard of it either… not to date ourselves! It was well received or else the popcorn was good.
Comments
Post a Comment