Children's Home "trip around the world"

We have just finished up our an autumn series of "Reading Club" workshops at the Children's Home. We are going "around the world" and learning about different countries each week. Each child has a "passport" to which another country gets added each week - and then the craft is connected to this country.

This was the week we did Finland, and made reindeers, but we also went to Peru and made Llamas and Egypt and become Pharoahs! It has been a fun time! (with a little bit of educational input as well!) 

So, a little aside story - I make the "inserts" for the passports (like for Finland above) and we use an A3 size of blue paper that I have a LOT of from a donation maybe 15 years ago from somewhere. We fold it up and then use it as a little blue notebook to stick our "country inserts" into. We had a meeting for volunteers to give input into our program and they gave us feedback that maybe it would be good to use other colours other than blue as some of the kids didn't want blue.

Well, I searched high and low in Banja Luka and the only A3 paper they had was in white. There was NO coloured A3 paper in the city. I could order it online, but I didn't have the time... But I just think it is so amazing that we actually started doing these passports and notebooks out of the blue paper because it was something I already had - and it seems as if we will have to plan ahead if we want to continue using this same method in the future (when the blue paper runs out!) 

I always put a fun quote on the "name page". In February/March it was "Books are like a garden which you carry in your pocket" - Chinese proverb

And for their "trip around the world" it is Dr Suess: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." 

What have I been up to!?

Here is a little video which shows more of my ministry in Banja Luka, Bosnia Herzegovina and beyond... Enjoy! 

 

Last night at the Children's Home

We have been going in faithfully each week since October, but for our last time, we had a bit of a different "Book Club". My friend, Aleksandra works at the Children's Library and she has a drama club. They were putting together a performance of "Cinderella" and so I asked her if they wanted to do a performance at the Children's Home and they were excited to be given the chance to perform. (They usually just perform for their moms and dads and grandparents.) 

It was a great performance and the kids loved every bit of it! Some of the girls may have fallen in love with the Prince... 

After the performance, we made glass slippers or masks for the ball: 

As you can see, everyone had a great time - including the kids in the play! It was a great way to finish off our Book Club for 2022! 

November happenings in Banja Luka

During November, after all my travels in September and October, I was firmly in place in Banja Luka, but we had some lovely visitors come to stay which was great fun. We also managed to get up to a lot of different things during the month! 

Eric and Sophie (above) came from YWAM Ireland, and Jesse and Charity from InterVarsity - all in time for the events we held with Professor Emyr MacDonald, who is a Professor with Cardiff University who also is a believer. His work in nanoscience has caused him to believe even more in a creator God as he sees all the intricate details at the nano-level which couldn't have just happened by chance. He spoke at an event at Ihtus (below) and he also lectured at the Natural Science faculty. 

Sophie and Eric also helped with our weekly reading club at the Children's Home. We have really enjoyed going in each week with a different story and then doing a craft - and my favourite was definitely this one of Pinocchio: It might have taken me going to 4 different stores to find the split pins to use for it, but it was worth it! They were super cute - and yes the pencil nose can grow when he is lying! 

And we also held a "Fall party" while Sophie and Eric were still around. Based on Thanksgiving it was a great evening of fall foods and also remembering all that we are thankful for: 

The last week of November, we held the training for Operation Christmas Child ministry partners for this part of the country:

Here I am in action, doing my part of the training: 

We have to ensure that the partners will do the distribution of the 10 000 packages in the way that they are supposed to. It is so fun to be able to be part of the team that helps make sure things are done well.

Our friend, Jelena, was also coming to help with the training, so we convinced her to come early and stay on and so she helped us with our Reading Club and also ran an event for the Mothers in our sponsorship project (she is on the left): 

She talked about "Zimnica" (Preserves) which each woman here usually makes for winter - jams, relishes, pickled vegetables, you name it. But she related it to our spiritual/emotional lives - that we also need to preserve good thoughts and things we are grateful for. We each decorated a jar with little slips of paper inside with things we are grateful for. When times are hard we can take them out and remind ourselves of all the good things in our lives. It was such a good life lesson and the mother's loved it!

 Here are Emina and Vesna with their jars: 

All in all it was a busy and varied month, and a lot of things to be grateful for!! 

Back at the Children's Home

We were just about to start up our Book Club in March when the Covid19 lockdown happened here in Bosnia Herzegovina, and so we haven't been back since last year. We did make presents for the kids back in June, but haven't been able to go because of Covid concerns. 

As the children are now back in school, we were asked if we would like to go in to run a special once off workshop for "Children's Week", but under Covid conditions - me with only two volunteers... As we normally have between 10-15 volunteers, I decided that with just 3 of us, we could only concentrate on the younger kids... And then asked that if things went well if we would be able to keep going in with more of the volunteers (ALL of whom want to go in and see the kids!!). I took in two of our older volunteers, Nina and Nada, and with their helps, things went really well :)

The theme for the workshop was "My Health", so we started off with a fun Quiz on different aspects of health, from oral hygiene to healthy eating, before getting on with the real work: 

We started with their favourity activity - colouring: 

We were making this wonderful poster to which tell of all the things a body needs to be healthy: 

from physical activity to enough sleep...

Then it was time to move on to our next activity, more Covid related: 

We were making these fun posters to remind us to wash our hands - they say "Clean Hands are Happy Hands"... we love our cutting and pasting: 

And here is most of the kids (some were still finishing up...and we were taking photos to keep these ones occupied ;) ) with our handiwork... 

Nina and Nada had a great time - and as it went so well we will see (if Covid allows) if I can go in and do more workshops with other volunteers as well! 

Last night at the Children's Home

After taking the children in two groups to the Children's Theatre over two weeks - to watch "Puss in Boots" and "Pinocchio", it was time to finish up our workshop for the year... the volunteers love just hanging out with the kids - here is Marija learning from the kids the latest clapping game - so cute!

We decided to make creations out of "Hama" or "Perla" beads... I found them in IKEA in Zagreb and the kids looooooved working with them:

And Haley our wonderful intern spent the evening doing the ironing - which is how they get fused together: 

And of course we didn't have any pictures of a completed product, but you get the idea!!

Then it was time to give out the prizes for attendance... everyone who attended at least half of the workshops and were good got a little prize... the team from Lausanne helped us make them up :)

Here are the girls with their prizes - the boys got theirs first, but all of the photos of them are blurry as they tend to not stay still haha... (faces blurred to protect privacy)

A BIG thank-you to all the wonderful volunteers who help make this project such a success - we will have a break over the winter months and start up again in March.

Back in Banja Luka, back at the Children's Home!

We started back at the children's home with an evening about South Africa. I did a presentation about my home country and of course forgot to get ANY photos of me doing it, oh well. You will just have to take my word for it...

I tried to make it fun for the kids - at one stage, I showed them pictures of penguins, thinking they would be amazed... but they had already been told by their carer that Aunty Belinda wasn't coming to the children's home as she was in South Africa, swimming with the penguins... she is one of my friends on facebook and so saw my posts about that haha! And here I thought I would surprise them all, but no... they already knew about the penguins!!

I did surprise them with the currency of South Africa... I had two complete sets... one with the "normal" animals on them...

And Nelson Mandela on the other side...

And then thanks to my Aunt Janny a complete set of "Mandela" notes where he is on both sides - the above older pic on the one side and the younger Nelson on the other... and they were a great hit (and yes I did get them all back!)

And then I explained more about who Nelson Mandela was, and how amazing his life was... and his legacy around the world... And then we made necklaces like the one he has on in this pic: (so we could ALL make "African" Necklaces and not just be for the girls...).

You may have seen my post on Facebook about how much trouble I had to go to find the silly lovely paper plates to do this activity with the kids - I went to 7 shops and then phoned round to another 4 places before I found them, but find them I did!! And it was all worth it: 

Seriously, one of the more fun activities we have done with the kids - they love cutting and colouring and then they had something fun at the end to remind them of Africa and Nelson Mandela:

I can't show you the pics of the kids with theirs on without blurring their faces, which I don't like to do - but I can show you some of the volunteers... who also enjoyed themselves :) Nada and Alma:

It was a great way to start off this year at the Home... we go to the Theatre with them this next week, can't wait!! 

Last Book Club for 2018

Last night was the last Book Club for this year... we always take the kids "prizes" for attendance, but this time we also organised a fun evening for them as well! I was a little apprehensive as to how it would work out as they can get excited and not behave well, and this format can mean they get excited... but it worked out better than I could have imagined and everyone had a phenomenal time!

We had different "stations" around the room including two crafts and a colouring table:

Three different kinds of games: including throwing into boxes to get points (I made this one in the summer for one of our day camps with our sponsorship kids with boxes I had around the house - and made pompoms to throw... and the kids love it!)

And fusball: another favourite!

We had two lovely volunteers painting faces (we only got a pic of Monika...)

And near the end of the evening there were more kids than they could finish in time, so I stepped in to help with some of the easier requests... butterflies and cats and flowers :) And of course the kids loved that "Teta Belinda" (Aunty Belinda) was doing their faces so they didn't mind that the quality was not as good... I was churning them out so we could finish up! 

Another "station" was the photobooth and they had fun with the photobooth items! (a wonderful team cut these all out in 2015, and they are still going strong!) Love it! 

One of the reasons they were probably being so good is that we also give out the "prizes" for those who have attended the book club and so if they were naughty they know they won't get their prize... This semester, I got organised and we even had a "star chart" where they got a star for coming and a star for being good until the end... And it really worked, we had fewer kids giving us problems and many more coming who wouldn't normally... love it! 

Here are two of the girls getting their "prizes" which a few volunteers and I made up on Tuesday night out of different donations: 

Then, there was a special prize on top of the attendance one for those who got ALL the stars - they got to choose one prize out of the box: I pulled out the names randomly for that one so it was fair... and they loved being able to choose what they got!!

There were only 8 volunteers and myself and we managed to pull that off with over 30 kids... I am so grateful for our wonderful volunteers! They seriously ROCK! And I am so happy that with all the planning and everything that went into last night that everyone had a fantastic time! It really was one of the best Book Clubs we have ever had!