In the period of 8th of October until 14th of October the 3rd primary school of Vrontados had an Erasmus+ program with the topic „Social and emotional skills – Leading to success in life“. The aim of the project was to teach the children, by informal learning, doing excursions and meeting other people from different countries, to read, analyze and interpret the emotions of the other people in a right way. We were very happy to welcome guests from Italy, Romania, Turkey and Poland on our beautiful Island. In general we had about 50 people from different countries.
Weeks before the program started, we, the volunteers together with the teachers of the school, had to do a lot of preparation. For example we made a program folder, the certificate of attendance for the children, the welcome ceremony, the decoration of the school and many other things.
Full of anticipation to meet the people from the other countries we met together in the kindergarten. After a warm welcome from our head teacher, we enjoyed watching the welcome ceremony, a theatre with the main topic Chios Island. The children showed how to collect Mastic or what means dancing in Greece. The whole ceremony was organized by the teachers and volunteers and it was a great success! The audience gave a very voluminous and long applause.
After this welcome, some parents of our school waited with Loukoumades, a very tasty sweet Greek dish for our guests. Strengthened, we started with the main program of today, the ice breaking games, where we not only played traditional Greek games like Mila, but also international games. The volunteers had to pay attention to the children and keep the game running. Another main task was to explain to the children the games, which was sometimes quite difficult, because of the great diversity of the languages, but luckily we were supported by the local and our guest teachers.
Having the Greek music in their ears, our teachers and students started to dance after the ice breaking games, which was for sure a great attraction for our guests, but they couldn’t just watch and after some minutes they started to dance with us. Of course also we volunteers couldn’t just stand around, so we also moved our legs to the rhythm of the Greek music.
Doing sport activities makes hungry of course, so the parents of our school organized a big buffet with very delicious Greek specialities. From Mousaka, Pastizio or Tsatsicky to Baklava we had everything and could enjoy the best Greek food. For our foreign guests this buffet was of course also one great opportunity to try Greek delights and they appreciate it very much.
To see all the pictures go into our gallery!
