After school programs to inspire children & youth

There has been a lot going on at Clara Luna in the past few months. September, October, and November were filled with an array of themes for Children’s Club, from King Kong and climate change to women’s empowerment and Ecuadorian legends. Throughout September we read Anthony Browne’s King Kong book and followed it up with crafts inspired by the book. At the end of September, to honor 2019’s Climate Strike, we held an event for the Children’s Club in a local park, reading children’s books on the environment and finishing the evening with a play put on by the kids! In October, in the spirit of Halloween and Día de los Muertos, we read spooky legends from Ecuador, including “La Dama Tapada”, “La Mano Negra”, and “Las Brujas Blancas”. To end October we hosted an event where our Children’s Club participants read these traditional stories to their parents. Afterwards, a group of children performed a muppet rendition of “Davilara, el Rey de la Bomba”, based on the award-winning book “A ritmo endiablado de bomba” written by Marco Chamorro and Alice Bossut. In November, we shifted the focus of our club to women’s and girls’ empowerment throughout the globe, reading stories about inspirational individuals like Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and the Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic. As always, we followed our stories with arts & crafts, such as making homemade medals for our students to present to their mothers.

In September we restarted our Youth Club on Saturdays with pre-teens. For this we start with English lessons for an hour and then move on to activities that mirror the Childrens’ Club but more advanced, both technically and thematically.

For the children’s English classes, in September we learned about haikus and names of foods. One class included a blindfolded fruit tasting game which our students loved. In October we covered a wide variety of topics, getting help from two Swiss volunteers to take over the classes. In November, we learned about different English-speaking countries, discovering the traditional foods, dances, and some slang from countries such as Jamaica and Ireland. For the adults’ English classes, we continued our usual bi-weekly lessons on grammar and new vocabulary. For our Intercambio, or language exchange, we played many language-learning games enjoyed by our participants from Ecuador, Germany, the United States, France, Belgium, and Switzerland.

It was a busy and very enjoyable few months, and we hope to continue this action-packed schedule into 2020!

These lasts few months have been quite busy with the registration of new kids, curious, full of imagination and energy. The “older” kids are proud to be the one able to explain and the new ones quickly integrated to the group.

This month was the birthday of Anthony Brown, one of Clara Luna’s favorite writer, so we spend the month reading his books, especially his version of King-Kong. Since the book is large, we split it into 4 parts and read it through 2 weeks. Erveyday, the children had to try and imagine what would happen next, and you can see their imagination does not have boarders.

This book had so much success that we decided to work on it with the teenagers. They had to read it out loud to practice their oral expression, and they finished it in a day!

To continue our partnership with a French association, Yanapanaku, the teenager’s group, that did a “crepes” recipe, made thanks to a video from the French teenagers prepared a video explaining how to make a ceviche, a typical dish from the Ecuadorian coast. We are looking forward to receive the video of them trying to cook this dish !

At the beginning of the months, the children took part with their parents to the closing session of the program “escuela para padres” (school for parents). A big game in teams was organized with questions, games, challenges such as dancing competitions. It was amazing to see families compete against one another and parents having at least as much fun as the kids.

See you soon !