Khmer New Year

The center has just been closed for the week for the Khmer New Year Holidays. The official days of the holiday are the 13th, 14th and 15th of April but everything closes down for the week as everyone heads to their family homes around the country. It is a very important time in Cambodia to share with family.

Gathered for the games.

To mark it the center holds a huge party the day before the holidays begin. The party this year was great fun, all the children from the center, our older students and families in the area, all came along to watch and play the games. All the games were traditional party games so we had sack races, tug of wars, musical statues, flower and egg races, water carrying races, dances and many more.

Sack race!

Showing off some dance moves.

Dance performance.

Pinata time.

Some visitors were kind enough to donate 2 huge cakes which we divided up and gave out to the children, along with the huge table of fruit. So they all ate well and went home with big smiles on their faces and on a sugar high! It is always nice to bring the community together for evens like this and everyone really enjoyed themselves.

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Gardening

Recently we have been doing up our garden. Reviving our plants and growing some new ones. The children have been getting involved digging the earth and planting the seeds. They have been very diligent with watering them each day (it is very hot here at the moment). They have enjoyed getting involved, especially our younger members who thought a chance to get really dirty was a great idea! We are growing pumpkins, so hope we should have a crop in a month or two.

Helping to plant seeds.

We are also (after our Khmer New Year holiday) hoping to start some individual planting, giving each of the children their own “pot” (the plastic cups which are always littering our playground) and seed which they have to be responsible for. Watering it and seeing if they can get it to grow. This will go hand in hand with a basic lesson on how plants grow and why they are so important. To go with this we will be conducting a group experiment, keeping natural waste, plastics etc…in separate sealed bottles so the children can begin to learn about decomposition  Littering is a huge problem in Cambodia with no real rubbish collection and environmental issues rarely being touched upon in schools.  We hope this visual experiment will have a positive impact on our childrens attitude and understanding of rubbish.