Last Thursday was a
special day in the community of Flora Tristan. For the first time, HOOP
organized an “International Day”. With the participation
of all kids as well as many moms, HOOP’s International Day was a fun afternoon
full of interesting information, fun competitions and practical activities.
HOOP volunteers were divided into
groups and each group was assigned with the task of preparing a presentation
and some extra activities about a specific continent. As the HOOP team is very
international, there was at least one volunteer from each of the six continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania.
The idea of International Day was
that the kids get the chance to “travel” the world in one day! To make this
possible, the volunteers transformed each classroom into a different continent,
decorating them with maps, flags, and pictures of the most typical dances,
food, dressing styles, buildings, animals and so on. Besides that, for the
older kids the volunteers created fun competitions such as quizzes related to
the topics covered during the presentations, whereas for the younger ones, the
volunteers designed practical activities such as drawing, painting and dancing.
In order to get everyone to visit
the whole world, the kids were divided in groups according to their English
level and travelled around the world rotating from one classroom to the next one,
starting the journey in South America and finishing it in Asia. To make the
whole experience more exciting for the kids the HOOP volunteers came up with the
idea of making individual passports for each kid and stamp it for each continent they visited. It was
lovely to see their happy faces getting a new stamp in their
passports!
The event was both fun and also provided important geography knowledge to the children and their moms. While they had great fun with the idea of travelling around and getting
to know new countries, the event also helped them to understand that each
country has its own way of living and that cultural diversity is a positive
thing. We will definitely organize another event like this and the kids can’t wait to travel the world
again!
Written by Cayruã Fonseca
