Winter holidays

           Wonderful time came! Time we all expected! Winter holidays!

         Poland is an interesting country… This year children had an incredibly long rest from 24 of December to 7 of January (Christmas time) and from 19 of January to 2 of February (Winter holidays or “Ferie zimowe”). “Oh, lucky” I would say to myself 6 or more years ago.

      Our main task as a EVS volunteers was organizing children’s leisure time as funny and interesting as possible. Actually our work was concentrated in day care centre or “Swietlica” but we had to realize a lot of other ideas.

Hugo tell children from Gzy about Spain

   We started our holidays in village Gzy which we visited during European Language Day in September. Children in Gzy are amazing: the calmest and modest in the world. They are shy, smile a little, hide their eyes – regime “wildness” is off. As usual me and Hugo shared time, this time me as a gentlemen let Hugo start first. In one hour everyone presented their country and taught words and basic phrases in Spanish and Russian: “My name is…” or name of animals, numbers and colours. As usual a lot of photo of Hugo working, only one or two of mine :-(

Kids learn Spanish numbers and play

     Beside this work we showed them a Russian cartoon that Polish children like very much, made postcards from paper Russian Matrioshki and gave them old Russian woman names. At the same time Hugo created different competitions as armwrestling.

      I think children and teachers liked this beginning of winter holidays because they invited us for another visit. They gave us beautiful handmade flowers from paper and fed us tasty pizza for lunch. Hope to come back here one more time :-) Special thanks to Alicja Krawczynska for translation and positive energy :-)

     

      Next time of our holidays we devoted to our favourite day care centre and children we have known for a long time and too good - regime “wildness” is on. In the first week we welcomed our friends and EVS volunteers from our mother organization SPW office in Warsaw – Dominik from Czech Republic and Judita from Slovakia. They are very positive and open minded persons from beautiful Slavic countries. Dominik works in Jedrus as a volunteer helping teachers and Judita – in SPW office helping promote this organisation. Read their blog and new post about experience of work with Pultusk children. (http://siedzisobiejez.blogspot.com/2015/01/spw-volunteers-in-putusk.html) Everyone speaks Polish very well – our children help everybody learn it very fast. 

Judyta tell about Slovakia

      They showed a presentation about their countries – short video or pictures, cartoons, taught children some words in their language. In the end one of the children saw a movie “Harry Potter” in Judita’s pendrive and asked us to watch it. So as a part of our English club we tried to understand what main characters were talking about in English.

       Beside the work in Swietlica we created two extra meetings for inhabitants of Pultusk. First was tandem language meeting or “podwieczorek jezykowy”. This kind of meeting help students to overcome their level of foreign language, meet interesting people from different country and have a good time. Dominik headed English table and helped my English group with whom we have meetings every Wednesday. Hugo – Spanish table with a teacher from Pultusk Academia. Elena and Sasha – Russian with our local volunteer Weronika and our project coordinator Sylwia. I prepared different funny questions in Russian for example about favourite superpower or times you want to visit if you have time machine :-) This kind of meeting – in different form (tandem, picnic) – are very popular and productive.

Dominik and our loval volunteer play  "Catan"

     Second meeting – board games. We started from simple but funny game – Dobble. We had a lot of cards with pictures and everyone have to find similarities in their cards and the main one. Actually there are more different ways to play this game. The funniest moment was when everyone named pictures in their language – Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovak, English. It is the one of the best way to learn other language. And continued with “Jungle Speed”, “Wieża” and one of my favourite right now - “Dixit”. Our fantasy is the most important in this game. Everyone have three cards with different unusual and strange pictures. Our task is to choose a picture and say the word or sentence from books, movies and songs with which you have an association. “Dixit” has a side effects as remembering of different associations in our life, a lot of laugh and positive energy till the end of meeting.

     I want to say thank you for this interesting week to our EVS friend Dominik for optimism and fun and Judita for stories about Iceland and teaching me Slovak, Weronika and Alicja for translation and helping in day care centre :-) Sylwia for painting posters for grandparents day and Sasha for organizing our free time with watching Russian movies.

Fatima tell about Portugal

    Last week of winter holidays we were visited by another two volunteers from Warsaw – Fatima from Portugal and Alisa from Germany. Girls work in Helenow and the helping Hand Foundation with disabled people and they were very happy to change place and kind of work for one week. It was a good opportunity to start speak a lot in Polish, to find new friends among our children and realized all ideas they had. We had more advantage. First step – Portuguese day. Fatima created a presentation about her country, show different songs in her language, made language games with postcards and of course face painting. Second step – German day with videos and language games: you have to show animal and name it in German or jump as many times as need and call every number. 

Alisa tell about Germany

     Third step – Russian day – was opened by flood in Swietlica. Don’t worry, that just mean that our time didn’t come, we had to wait. Fourth step – last day of our winter holidays. We decided to realize idea with carnival. At 10 o’clock we started to make funny masks for children: flower queen, Spiderman, Indian, cat, Venice masks. Teachers decorated our room with colour paper. After – games with chairs, mummies from toilette paper, figure game with music and of course face painting and x box dance! There were not so much children that we expected in the beginning. Despite of this everybody was very happy, tired and with good memories I hope.

Carnival meeting

Our tandem meeting

      Fatima and Alisa also helped us with our second tandem meeting and board games. Fatima headed Portuguese table (yes, in Pultusk we have a people who speak Portuguesse, Fatima was happy :-)) and Alisa – English table with my English students. Special thanks to them for coming and jokes about German, Russian and Polish :-) 

     We were very tired during this two weeks but happy and proud for ourselves. Thanks to everybody who participated, special thanks to Fatima and Alisa for their enthusiasm and great dancing ideas, lessons of Portuguese (Sou linda e fantasica :-)) and German (now I know what is the song “Moscow” about). 

     Of course to be a group leader (or I prefer boss, as Fatima said ;-)) is not so easy, I hope I made everything possible so that they felt good and comfortable in Pultusk. Hope to see you, dear volunteers, one more time :-)

     All the best,
         Elena.