Summer Urban Camp: PIrates school!

These days we are organazing, preparing and working on a summer urban camp to develop on July in Slobozia. 

A Summer Urban Camp is an alternative for children to enjoy the summer in a creative and healthy way.

Why?

Summer is a long period for the kids which is used to have a break of the formal education time, enjoy the family, the weather, be relaxed, go on travelling, and discover new things… But it’s complicated to conciliate all this good experiences for the kids, and the full time occupation of the families (they don’t have a 3 months holiday break!) The families can use a public local service to give the kids a varied free time when they are at work. The kids will be playing, learning and discovering with other kids until the evening in a known placed close to their houses.

Where?

A summer urban camp is developed in the schools to offer the children healthy free time through non formal education methods and activities during holidays to complement the formal education time.

How?

Each fortnight we will develop a different topic which involves different activities. Every chosen topic will be interesting, attractive, educative and funny. Every activity will be carried out with the aim of stimulate creativity and fun. The activities are specially designed for different ages and capacities in a schedule specially designed to combine games, sports, crafts, movement and body expression.

Who? 

- Leisure staff:

-Yoana Prieto: she comes from Spain, she is 28, she is a social integrator and social animator, and also a leisure and outdoor activities instructor. She has experience working with different social collectives like homeless people and a lot of experience with children. She is calm, smiling and patience and she knows a lot of crafts!!!

-Daniel Muenstermann: he comes from Germany, he is 26, he is a social educator. He has different experiences in kindergartens. He is creative, and dynamic. He plays guitar, draw comics and he knows a lot about fantastic worlds!!!

-Aldara Arango (Dada): she comes from Spain, she is 24, she is a social worker, laughter and music therapist, and also a leisure and outdoor activities instructor. She has a few experiences with children and youth as a volunteer of different organizations. She is very creative, flexible and has a lot of love to share!!!

To whom? 

-To kids from Slobozia from 6 to 16 years old who want to have fun, play with other kids, learn and discover new things, and again, have a lot of fun!

-To 12 kids from the family type homes.

When? 

From 9th of July to 19th of July 2013.

From Monday to Friday, from 10 to 4.

Schedule:
10.00 – 11.00:        Outside games

11.00 – 12.00:        Crafts and workshops

12.00 – 12.30:        Break

12.30 – 13.30:        Gymkhana

13.30 – 14.00:        Evaluation

14.00 – 14.30:        Lunch

14.30 – 16.00:        Day’s special activity

Al :)

Sărbătorile Municipiului Slobozia III: duminică

 On the last day of the Slobozia's feast we could enjoy demonstrations of a few sports which are available to practice in Slobozia like Judo, Zumba, Tae bo, Karate, Boxing...

 

After the sports, the big contest of the night started, Miss Slobozia:

Miss Slobozia 2013 was coronated and the party kept on going. The concerts started: first a romanian singer of traditional music as hora, later, a romanian rock band.

Al :)

Sărbătorile Municipiului Slobozia II: sambata

Saturday was the more expected day of Slobozia's feast. The funpark was full since the afternoon so we could enjoy such a good atmosphere of celebration and party. We took a look at the stands and we also bought some things. We enjoyed some fairground amusements and we checked our marksmanship on a balloon shooting game. I won an awesome and useful prize: a birthday hat!!!

After a dinner with our favorite romanian plate: mici! we moved to the stage area. The first artist of the night was Pepe, a romanian singer and TV presenter.

 

Emil Lassaria and Caitlyn were the second artists. We already knew some songs of them because they are so many times on KissTV, and because mostly of their songs are in spanish!

The party finished with the Dj. We danced and sang a lot and we even had enough energy for the next day!

Al :)

Sărbătorile Municipiului Slobozia I: vineri

On Thursday 13 Slobozia's feast started: 4 days of celebration around the city. This feast was the 13th edition and all the people from Slobozia, and another towns, could enjoy concerts, sports exhibitions, parades, traditional dances, contests, expositions, music shows and other attractions!

The feast began on Thursday morning in the Cathedral Park, where the statue of Slobozia's heroes is placed. There were some ceremonies and the concert of the Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately this day it rained, so we couldn't join the exhibitions of the evening with the kids.

On Friday (vineri) we spent the evening with the kids at the funfair:

Our brave girls joined the Summer Loops, the most vertiginous attraction. Our small girls had a lot of fun in a magic train full of colors, and also mostly of us joined the bumper cars:

After all this fun, we went to the stage to welcome the participants of the parade who came from the other part of the city. And we enjoyed the concert of the Slobozia music band.

Friday was the day dedicated to traditional dances, so different dance groups joined Slobozia's feast. We could see dances from Romania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland:

At 9 o'clock we came back to the vilas after a funny day, but the fun had not been finished yet! We enjoyed another 2 more days at Slobozia's feast!!!

Al :)

Let's go to the circus!

Last Wednesday we went to the Aquatic Bellucci Circus. They were 3 days in Slobozia, and they are now in the coast (Mamaia).

The origins of this circus go back to 1800 in Rome, where Emilio Montesacro Bellucci lived. At this time he conducted a well-known pharmacy. His three children, medical students, helped him in this profession, but one of them, Armando, fell in love with Maria Lelli, who was working in a small circus at that time. From this relationship rises the long and happy marriage of the Bellucci family with the magical world of the circus. (You can read more about this story here).
 

(Pictures from Bellucci Circus's facebook)

We spent 3 hours in the circus, the first hour with the story of a pirate who is searching for his love, a women with a white dress. In this part we could see dancers, acrobats, jugglers... And a second part with animals like hippos, penguins, snakes, turtles, seals, pelicans...

Every day the circus was full and  we want to wish them a lot of more success!!! And we also want to thank them because they treated us very good!

Al :)

Behind the scenes: the preparation of the children's day

To prepare the children's day (you can read our post about it here) we worked a complete week with the kids and the educators' help. The first day we prepared the decoration for the performance. We wrote in 3 big papers our slogan: "suntem frumosi, suntem naturali, suntem copii" which means "we are beautiful, we are natural, we are kids". With this slogan we wanted to transmit the characteristics of the children: their innocence, their imagination, their empathy, their creativity, their  curiosity... And we wanted to stress that, above all, they are children!

Our perfomance was a mix-dance of 3 songs:
- Break the chain
- A part of One billion rising
- I'm walking on sunshine

The first 2 songs belongs to the "One billion rising", a project which wanted to aware people about the violence against women in our world:
"1 in 3 women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her life time.

One billion women raped is an atrocity.
One billion women dancing is a revolution".

They want to make violence against women impossible to ignore and remind the world that united women will never be defeated!! For this they created an event to performance on february 14: a flashmob with the song break the chain. The event was successful, and thousands of flashmobs were performed all over the world.

They share a learning video in Youtube with all the dance steps:
(We learned the steps in a few days!!!)

For the last part of the show we chose a funny song to improvise with our guitars!!!
But wait! Do we have guitars? YES, WE DO!!!

Daniel drew these amazing guitars and every kid painted them how they wanted!

Al :)