January 2016 Activities at Svitac
During January Svitac continued with regular activities:
- Music workshops (guitar and music workshops for children)
- The music workshops have changed slightly since December. After the success of singing Hakuna Matata, Sam moved the children on to reading music notation and playing the keyboard. In terms of singing, they spent a couple of weeks singing “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd in English, something both the participants and volunteers appeared to enjoy. The children can now read an octave of music on the treble clef, and some can play basic tunes on the keyboard. The participants are now using their new found knowledge of music notation to learn how to play the Pink Panther Theme on the Boomwhackers, with minimal assistance.
- Culture and Art Diversity around the World (includes English, German, Art&Crafts, Music and Sports workshops from Monday to Friday)
- Younger group added one more activity to their daily routine – sport. A lot of parents said that they like it when children run, so instead of leaving children to run around knocking into each other, Svitac’s Art Coordinator started an activity called “sports minutes” consisting of “sports minutes” as a “warm up exercise” that is appropriate for children. They walk, run, stretch, do breathing exercises, and then they finish off with some goofing around such as shaking their hands, legs, head and then whole body, which usually ends up with a lot of laughing from children.
- Older group made winter banners using acrylic, sequence, cotton, pipe cleaners and crayons. The banner was very big and was made from three big pieces of thick paper. It was decorated with small details like 3D threes, 2D snowman and Santa’s head…etc, which children made themselves. They also made action figures that represent the start of the project for the board game that they will make later with the volunteers.
- Language workshops (English and German)
- “Let’s speak German” (informal German workshops for teenagers and young people)
- Drama – After finishing the play ‘Petar i Vuk’, volunteer instructor Anne introduced the idea of making a short film about Brčko in the Spring for the kids. She is currently researching information about different places in Brčko. Until then, Anne is planning to start another drama play “Karijes i Bakterije”. After the first rehearsals all the roles were assigned and in the future the children had to act out and train according to the text. Due to the fact that Anne does not want them to have a lot of work at home, she will take all the time needed to rehearse the text and the acting during the workshop. The kids liked both ideas, but due to the fact that children from different ages are going to work together, Anne is going to put more attention on motivation and discipline.
- Sports workshops (“Freeletics”, Karate)
111 participants attended regular Svitac workshops in January. Participants attending all these regular workshops were between 4 and 40 years old. The youngest and the oldest participants attended Culture and Art Diversity around the World workshops and English/German workshops for adults.
Due to some administrative problems in the Brčko youth center, all workshops after 4.00p.m. did not take place in January. A silver lining in this cloud was that this led the staff and volunteers to become more involved in the daily workshops and activities, while giving them time to prepare future projects and collect ideas. The Brčko youth centre was due to regular hours in the afternoon from 1st of February onwards.