Semillas de Amor: Recycling project

February 28
By Sarah MacCarthy

Semillas de Amor in Turbaco has been busy collecting plastic bottle caps for our upcoming art project. The idea originally came from my cousin, who is a middle-school art teacher in Colorado. We are working towards two different goals. The first goal is to work together as a "team" to accomplish a larger project and the second goal is to recycle these bottle caps that would otherwise remain in the street. The kids bring as many "tapas" as they can to the foundation each day. In another week, we will start to wash, design and assemble a sign for the foundation.

The field trip to Cartagena is still in the works and that will be another exciting event coming up in March. We hope to tour the local university, visit a couple museums and take the kids out for pizza. It should be a great experience.

Stay tuned for more photos and updates to come!

Karen, Nohemi and Zuliney arrive to the foundation with the bottle caps that they have found.

The local Turbaco kids have been helping us with our upcoming art project.

El Bichito: All you need is “lo-vay”

February 16
By Alicia Platt

Friday was Día de San Valentín/Día de Amor y Amistad! They don’t celebrate it much here, but we did! We watched a short Charlie Brown clip in Spanish, learned Valentine’s Day words in English (thus, loh-vay), and made tarjetas de San Valentín (Valentines). There aren’t a lot of kids who come to El Bichito right now, as their school is out for their summer until March (and they don’t live close or need homework help), but the 8 or 10 who stayed made some great Valentines for their parents or grandparents.

El Bichito: February 10th update from Alicia

February 10
By Alicia Platt

Things are marching on here at El Bichito. I'm still trying to figure out a daily routine and am trying to plan better.  Even though there weren't many participants, we did have a math competition one day, which was fun, and a nutrition lesson that went really well. We also continue to lend books to kids every day, and I've been incorporating English into the FAMA or other lessons that we do, which they seem to like. Furthermore, English lessons with the college students have continued approximately 3 times a week (depending on the rain...) and I've enjoyed teaching those. My greatest feat this last week, however, was probably organizing the supply room!

Semillas de Amor: Quick update

February 10
By Sarah McCarthy

The end of the third week has come and gone quickly. This last week, we were able to celebrate several birthdays. Diego, a member of the foundation from Turbaco, turned 10 on February 5th!

This is a short update but we are in the process of planning several new projects at the foundation in the next month. Please check back for further updates soon.

In early March, we are planning a field trip to Cartagena. We hope to visit a local university in the old town as well as do a small city tour. Also, we have recently put up a good behavior chart in the foundation and each child is working towards this goal so that they can participate in the field trip!

Semillas de Amor: Meet Sarah

February 1
By Sarah MacCarthy

Hello. My name is Sarah MacCarthy and I am a new volunteer here at Semillas de Amor in Turbaco, Colombia. The second week of my internship has just come to an end and it has been an amazing learning experience thus far. This past week at the foundation our focus was about demonstrating our talents and learning about the talents of our classmates. The week started off with a basic discussion on talents and by the end of the week all the kids have practiced up for the big TALENT SHOW! 

I would like to highlight one participant in the talent show named Dayre. He is a rambunctious little kid that not only demonstrated his many talents to us but he also displayed to me that he understood the lesson. Near the end of the talent show, he asked me if I was going to sing and I explained to him, "singing is not my talent." He then politely asked me what my talents were and we had a good discussion. I thought this was a perfect demonstration of the lesson and what we had been talking about during the course of the week. Dayre has a lot of energy and he was able to use his energy to sing and dance for us this week. It was a successful week at the foundation and I look forward to more positive learning experiences in the future, for both the kids and myself.

 Uris introducing Dayre's act in the talent show.

 An artist demonstrating his talents to the group.

 These two young ladies danced, danced, danced.

The cheering section.

El Bichito: A busy ending

January 21

By Sunny Hicken

We made toothbrush holders out of plastic beverage bottles—a big one for el Bichito and smaller ones that each child could give to their family as a Christmas present. They finger-knitted a strap to hang it by, and we provided toothbrushes. (You can see some of them hanging from the pole in front of the white board.) We learned a fun song about brushing teeth—you can watch it here:

Christmas party! Eliana, a previous intern, came to help, and Melchora and Feliciana all helped put on a grand “chocolatada” with treats and games. We played musical chairs, a custom bingo game with everyone’s names on it, and danced to music.

Sierra’s 4th grade class in the United States had done a book drive, and books arrived just before we left. We skyped each other and got to say “Thank You!”

Along with the book drive, we received some donated funds that we used to build a bookcase and reading bench. Now el Bichito has it’s own reading corner to curl up in.

And Alida’s graduation! Congratulations Alida! Brent got to act as her “padrino” and attend the festivities. She received the dress as a gift from Eliana and looked beautiful! Alida is a hard worker and has been recognized for her studies at the local school.

El Bichito: Local volunteers

December 2
By Sunny Hicken

Something that has been great at El Bichito this last month or so is the help we have been getting from the local people. Some days I’ll have a mom come in to help with an activity, and other days we’ve had volunteers come help in other ways.  Here is a neighbor, Rosana helping with reading.

Gloria is a teacher we met who came to play math games with the kids. A woman who used to be a teacher has been coming on Tuesdays and teaching jewelry making and sneaking in some other lessons as well. One week she left a book and asked all the kids the read it.

 The next week, she brought her kids, and they put on a puppet show about the story, and she gave out small prizes to kids who could answer questions about it. It was awesome. We had a great group of kids all paying attention!

Another ongoing activity the kids enjoy here is jumping rope. Some kids come asking for a jump rope (“Una soga, por favor!”) before they even eat, but we tell them they have to eat and do homework first. Then when we get out the jumpropes, I ask them if they want me to say the rhyme in Spanish or English when they jump, and now several of them can say it in English themselves. It goes like this:

Tell me how many fish
Are there in the ocean:
1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

This way they practice counting in English. When they stop jumping, we ask what number it was in the other language. Here is the rhyme in Spanish:

Dime cuantos peces
Hay en el océano
1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

(To give crédito where crédito is due, I learned this rhyme from a bilingual song tape—yes, I got it a long time ago, it’s a cassette tape—called “Lyric Language” by Family Circus. It’s still around, I think.)