In Greece the summer starts already at the beginning of June and the days become very hot. All children were looking forward to play at the beach and go swimming. But the weeks before the summer break are a very important time for all school children. While the students at high school have their examination period, the kids in the kindergarten worked on the theatre play for the end of the school year.
For this, the teachers chose a nice fairytale with a lot of small dances and songs. The story was about a mermaid who loves to play with the waves of the sea, to dance with the wind and to spend time with the sun and clouds at her wonderful beach. Unfortunately the humans do not respect the beauty of the sea and its nature and throw a lot of old stuff and plastic into the water. This also gets on the nerve of all the sea animals, and they complain about the people. Good that the mermaid could speak with the humans and explain to them how to behave in a better way. At the end they celebrated the splendour of the sea all together.
To learn the text at home was easy for the most of the children but to remember the movements on the stage was a very difficult task. We volunteers showed it them as often as needed and tried to get them a bit more relaxed and smiling during the performances. Also, we crafted invitation cards for the play together with the children by painting a mermaid and decorated a shell with a lot of glitter. To give the feeling that the play takes part deep inside the sea we made a lot of fishes to decorate the theatre room, we crafted different mobiles and crabs out of the handprints of the children.
All children and their guest enjoyed the play very much. The children wear fantastic costumes and the parents sang enthusiastic with them classical Greek summer songs like “άσπρα καράβια τα όνειρά μας” (white ships of our dreams).
To fast was the last week of the school year running. We helped the teachers to create the portfolio of the children and made bags with their name for their handicrafts. By doing so, we remembered a lot of things we did during the year and saw again how much the children were growing up. We were a bit sad to say Goodbye to all of them, but we hope to meet some again during our summer activities.
And of course every end is a new beginning. At the first days of the holidays we helped the teachers to tidy up the rooms, remove old posters and name card and prepared the kindergarten for the next school year, when new children and volunteers are going to discover it.
To see all our pictures go into the gallery!
