Christmas Party and Lots of Presents

Our Christmas party was once again a lot of fun. We had been preparing all month for it, rehearsing songs, dances and plays, as well as making decorations. While obviously most Cambodian families don’t celebrate Christmas it is a great excuse to bring everyone together for a day of fun. Lots of parents and relatives turned up for it which always makes it extra special, for us and the children.

This year we were very generously donated hundreds of T-shirts and school sets from One Coin, so everyone got something to take home along with their normal bag of apples and soft drinks.

Another highlight was the costume show. M’lop Tapang let us borrow some of their traditional performance costumes along with descriptions to when they are warn. Everyone seemed to love learning a little bit about their cultural background and significance.

A big thank you to everyone that lent a hand!

 

Season’s Greetings!

Christmas is nearly upon us and the center is getting ready for it’s annual party. We would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to our friends and supporters for all their help. Without you, none of this would be possible! We hope you have a fantastic Christmas and the New Year brings you happiness beyond measure. THANK YOU!!

 

Football!

Mong, our lovely football coach, has finished his final university exams and new job training in the last few weeks. This means he has time to come back to the center and start a new football team (our older players continue to play). With the help of Sokheang, our equally lovely assistant manager, they invited the children into the center on Sunday to register names and try out a few drills to see what they could do. A few of the older team showed up to give pointers too. We also had a fair few girls which is fantastic!

It is always great to get the children involved in activities on Sundays as there is little else for them to do, so with extra football and our school Olympic trips, things are looking up!

None of these activities would be possible without the continued donations of our supporters, so thank you all so much!!

 

Eco-Soap Bank

The center has now joined forces with the Eco-Soap Bank. The idea behind the project is a simple one, in a country where poor sanitation is a leading factor in child illness and death, access to soap and knowledge about hygiene is crucial.

Eco-Soap Bank saw a way to increase this access by collecting all the old unwanted soaps from the many hotels in Cambodia (which otherwise would often end up in landfill), sanitising and reprocessing them, and then distributing them for free into the poorer areas of the community along with healthcare lessons.

The project has been a success in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh so we are hoping to follow suit. We have a team of women (all of who are relatives of our students) from underprivileged backgrounds now working on the project, earning themselves a much needed income.

It is a slow process of getting more and more hotels on board. Presently the women only work a few hours a week, producing enough soap for our area. Once the quantities collected go up and we can produce more, we will utilise our local NGO partners to distribute the soaps more widely across the province into the areas which really need it.

It is a fantastic project and we are very thankful to be a part of it!

SAMSUNG CSC

SAMSUNG CSC

 

School Olympics

Every Friday after English classes we have School Olympics. Every student is assigned a team (led by one of the teachers), we make sure the teams are an equal mix of ages. They stay in these teems for the next month of Fridays and compete in various sporting challenges, from relay races of all kinds, team tournaments of football or dodge-ball, to funny party games. Each week scores are recorded and the team with the highest number of points at the end of the month are the winners. They then get to go on a trip out as a reward. We have been to places like Molly golf Mini-golf (who very kindly let us play for free), to swim at the waterfalls, and to the cinema, so lots of fun!

It is a lovely thing to do on a Friday (although sometimes tiring!!) and a great way to make sure all the students mix and get to know each other, rather than staying in their set classes. It is also encouraging some of our less diligent students to make sure they attend. So far so good!

 

Weekly Group Projects

Once a week we get our children to do group projects. These cover a range of subjects including science, geography, history and human interest. For example some of our recent topics included coming up with new inventions and making adverts for them, exploring and  mapping our local area, carrying out surveys of the other students (favourite food/subject/colour etc) and making bar charts, making up plays about good and bad ways to behave in certain situations and inventing new superheros.

We introduce the topic in one large group and explain the aims/discuss ideas. Children are then divided up into groups and have an allotted time to complete the task (with help/guidance from the teachers), before returning to the larger group and presenting what they have done to the rest of the children and staff. This is sometime just done over one session, or for bigger topics, can span a few weeks. This means they are not only learning about the specific subjects we cover, but also how to be confident in presenting their ideas to others. It has been lovely so far and the children are really taking to it. Any suggestions for projects are welcome!

 

 

 

Recycled Flowers

For the last month we have been rejoined at the center by Julian (who last year ran a recycled plastic, kite making project), who has been back teaching our students again. (Photos our courtesy of him at blueskytravel).

His project has moved on to creating flowers from waste plastics, for decoration, or to add to shoes/hair ties. The process begins with a discussion on the environment, then over a few sessions collecting and cleaning discarded plastic bags from our local area, making these into flowers (different sizes, colours etc), and finally re-discussing environment issues to see what the children have learned.

The main aim is to teach children about the  importance of the environment and our impact on it through fun activities. The children really engaged in the project and have learned some valuable lessons about caring for the environment and re-purposing things which do not need to be waste.

 

 

Speaking Class

We run regular English speaking classes based on pronunciation and sound/word recognition. Our aim is to allow the children to communicate, even if in broken sentences. This plays on the way children learn best. Our first topics to cover include introductions, colours and objects, family, the body, weather, feelings, shopping, school and time. We will gradually build up to do more and more. We are lucky to have enough teachers (sometimes English sometimes Khmer) to run the classes in small groups to make sure the kids get the best possible experience.

 

 

A Bit of Decoration

We have been steadily brightening up the place with lots of new art. The children have tried their hands at murals, “stained glass” (with plastic and tissue paper), collarge, paper mache and painting. It’s great to let the children put their own mark on the center so they can really feel a part of it.

There was obviously some stray paintbrushes and glue spots as unseen little ones had their turn too, but nothing that a good wash couldn’t fix. It is always very good, messy fun to do art. The children love a chance to express their creativity.

 

Science

The students always love to try their hand at something new, so it was great to have some friends of the centre in to run a few science experiments. The children do not get that mush exposure to science, so it is great to teach them something different. We ran all sorts of experiments including floating eggs, holes in balloons and of course vinegar rockets!

Allowing the students to learn through doing is so important, so we made sure everyone got to join in and had a lot of fun doing so. We are looking forward to the next lessons!

 

 

Khmer New Year Party

We have just finished celebrating Khmer New Year here in Cambodia. It is always a fantastically fun time to be in the country with lots of parties and powder fights. Many businesses close down and most people go to spend the holidays with their families, often out in the countryside.

To mark the even we held our annual Khmer New Year Party. It was great, lots of games, dancing, laughing and eating. As always our wonderful staff did a great job at hosting it and making sure all the children and their families had a good time.

There are many traditional Khmer games to play at this time of year, clay pot breaking, tug of wars, different chasing games, eating contests. We managed to get through a fair few of them and everybody got to join in at some point. Last of all the children got to eat all the fruit we had brought, obviously a little messy but delicious, before heading off on their holidays.

 

Lots of Art, Lots of Helpers, Lots of Fun!

We have had an intensive few weeks of art and dance classes with many friends of the center calling in to run different sessions. The children have really enjoyed it. From making clay elephants, to tie-dye and jewellery making the children have been spoiled for choice.

We have way too many photos to chose from and we are saving the dance videos as some of the steps will make an appearance in our Khmer New Year celebrations. A huge thank you to Sandi, Jo, Frank, Rich, Phill, Mikki and Marah for making it so much fun!

 

 

A New Technique

We have been very lucky to be joined at the center by Elizabet and Sandra, a psychologist and social worker respectively, and art school members. They have been running a variety of workshops designed to get children to express their creativity in different forms and discover a new way of learning. The students seemed to really engage in the tasks and loved using their imaginations so much. Everything involved a process of discussions and free thought, play acting and hands on making/painting/playing. It was a great chance for the staff to discover new teaching methodologies.

All the workshops were lots of fun with everyone giggling away. It was a really lovely experience and one which has taught us all a lot here about creative ways of approaching learning which we will definitely be utilizing from now on.