This month we prepared a special night for children called Noc
Andersen (Night with Andersen). It is a night in which the children sleep in
some schools or libraries and there are activities related to some fairytales
or books such as games or workshops. This event was created in honor to
Andersen, a famous writer from Denmark who wrote stories like the little
Mermaid, the Ugly Duckling or The Little Match Girl, and some of them were
brought to the screen for Disney.
We were very motivated with this activity and we tried our best to
organize a good night of Andersen. After plenty of time preparing the program,
the day came.
Honestly I was a bit nervous because of two things: Czech language
and activities, as I did not know how were going to be the children and if they
would like the activities we prepared.
Before the children arrived, we prepared the rooms we were going to
use for activities and sleeping, the decoration, the gymkhana, the materials
for workshops...
Also we put our costumes, of course! As the topic was Little
Mermaid or stories related to water, Marion and I were Mermaids, Katka a shark,
Stanka an octopus and Aniska the sea.
Nineteen children applied for the activity. They arrived
around 17:00-18:00 and we helped them to leave their bags in the sleeping
rooms. The children who were ready came to Oaza to do card names. When
everybody was ready, when played some games together to learn the names and
speak about our favorite books.
Later we had dinner, and Marion and I did a small theatre to
introduce the next activity. The story was about a girl, Marion, who lost her
fish. I was the Mermaid who was going to help her to become Mermaid to find her fish in the
ocean, but I only had one tablet to become Marion mermaid, so if the children wanted to come with us to the
adventure, they would need to create a diving glasses and go to the sea with a
submarine.
We learn the dialog in Czech to do this theatre and for me it was very funny.
So we started the glasses workshop and the children created and painted them in the most creative ways. When everybody had his glasses we took pictures with the decorated background.
Later, we continued the adventure and we
started the gymkhana. The objective of this activity were to get 5 keys to find
the lost fish of Marion. How? The children needed to divided in groups and
every group needed to get a key by entering in some rooms of school and perform
different tasks there.
We prepared activities in every floor of school like to find 7
differences, draw a picture they could see in a screen, find the lost word of
some famous songs, etc.
After this activity, me, the little Mermaid, went with the keys to
rescue the lost fish, which was hidden in Stodovna with other rewards and
sweets for the children.
We finished late this activity, around 10:30. After we did some
workshops: origami, wool dolls and bookmarker.
Before going to sleep, Katka and Stanka read a book to the children in the sleeping rooms and they quickly fall slept.
To sum up, I enjoyed a lot this day. We were very lucky with the children because they were very good, they did not complain, they liked all activities and they payed attention everything we said to them. It was great fun for everybody and one of my best memories of my EVS :)
It’s not a joke ! The city of
Menton organized this festival since 1934 (after the winter) and now, there is
230 000 visitors each year. Before this, It was a famous carnival.
