END of the YEAR - OPEN HOUSE PARTY!

To celebrate all the kids groups and soccer groups coming to an end, we as a staff threw a big end of  the year event here at the LIGHT HOUSE Community Center.  It was a RAINY day, but the kids had a blast! 

Felipe welcoming the kids and explaining the various options of all the FUN stuff the kids could choose to do during this OPEN HOUSE day!  We offered many different types of games and fun activities.

Here is one of the girls who participates in my morning girls group.  She dressed up SO NICE for our party!  We were all a bit surprised and many people asked, "Why is she so dressed up?"  She just wanted to be!  Isn't she beautiful?

In the classroom I played hang man with Valeria from my afternoon girls group.  I first wrote a message saying, "I love Valeria a lot!"

  Then she wrote the same message back to me, "I love Laura a lot!"  Read it below in Portuguese!

Swimming in the Rain, Just Swimming in the Rain...

I have never seen the Light House pool SO FULL of kids!  The children LOVED swimming in the rain!  It was actually a little chilly too, but it did not phase them one bit!  The pool was FULL! 

COTTON CANDY!!!  Each child received a FREE cotton candy!

Waiting patiently in line for a cotton candy treat!

Checkers in Brazil!  Great rainy day game!

PLAYDOH!   PLAYDOH!  PLAYDOH!

Many of the children from the slum have NEVER had the opportunity to play with PLAYDOH.  I received several boxes full of playdoh, sent to me by my parents church (Bethesda Presbyterian Church located in York, SC).  Thank you for the donations!!! The kids have LOVED playing with the playdoh, and it is a great rainy day activity!

We were AMAZED at how the big, tough boys reacted 

to the PLAYDOH! They loved it! 

 It was great to see them enjoying and playing and being kids!  Usually kids get playing with playdoh out of their system at a young age, yet these boys have never had the opportunity to really play with playdoh... Here they have arrived at 10, 11, 12 years of age and are loving every moment of playing with playdoh!  I think that the boys spent MUCH more time at this activity station than the girls.

Concentrating and mesmorized by the COOLNESS of PLAYDOH!

I love it!

At the end of the day, kids were heading home in the rain!  Now that the rainy season is here, it RAINS and RAINS and RAINS for days on end.  Although it was  rainy day, we still had fun and the kids thoroughly enjoyed our end of the year event!