Aktun Chen Educational Trip!
TAO owners, Joyce and Mike McEntire wanted to provide an experience for some of the children so they negotiated a discount to Aktun Chen and paid the way for 10 children to attend. In preparation, the children practiced bicycling on longer routes, trained with their bikes, and also ran to strengthen their legs and improve their body condition. The kids were super excited to practice their bike-riding skills on the road from Hekab to Aktun Chen. It was a long roundtrip ride of 15km and the children didn’t complain at all! Upon arriving at Aktun Chen, we did a cave walk with a guide who educated the children about the caverns and formations, we met animals and finally, we swam in a beautiful cenote with the guide. The children really enjoyed the whole tour, learning how caves are formed, how slowly stalactites grow each year, information on animals such as parrots, snakes, and tortoises. Thank you very much to Joyce and Mike for providing a very beautiful experience for the children of the Library. Parents and children decided to sell snacks and desserts to raise funds for the next educational outing. This is how children learn to work and strive to have something. And to realize that to achieve daily and long-term goals you have to be creative and work hard.
Poets Joe and Ingrid taught a class on creating poetry on different occasions. They showed poetry about insects, games, nature… and explained how to create them. They encouraged the children to express their emotions, thoughts, observations, and memories while working with words that rhyme. The children really enjoyed creating poetry and did an excellent job of it. Poetry class helps express thoughts, creativity, writing skills, and vocabulary expansion. The children were very excited to show their poetry to their parents. They are proud of their poetry! It was invigorating to see how happy they are to participate in the poetry class and to learn something new. Thank you so much to Joe and Ingrid for spending your time in an important class for the kids! Here are samples of some of their poetry:
Poet Joe’s class:
• “La Rana salta en rama y muy felizmente ella se va a su casa.” (Lesly 8 years old)
• “Pluma me ayuda escribir una poema que mi corazón suena.” (Dafne 10years old)
Poet Ingrid’s class:
• “Soy una tortuga pero no de tierra. Echa me agua o si no me quema. Por que te quema ? Por que soy de agua.” ( Zoe 8 years old )
• “El sol y la luna
Tan brilloso como una lámpara,
Tan amarillo como un girasol,
Tan grande como un maíz al,
Tan amigo de la luna y la nubes,
La luna acompaña a la noche junto las estrellas,
Tan duroa como una piedra,
Tan gris como un ratón,
Tan circular como un planeta.” ( Alexandra 9 years old)
Congratulations to all the children and family members who participated in creating mobiles for the 4th annual Akumal Arts Festival! Mobiles were made from recycled plastic bottles, bottle caps, CD’s, and DVD’s. We are very proud of all of the children that worked together with parents and volunteers and used their creativity to help make their pueblo a place in which they can be proud. And they were able to keep a lot of recyclable materials from ending up in the landfill. The children learned that they can recycle items into beautiful art which is used to beautify the Akumal pueblo!
Thank you very much to all the volunteers who prepped many of these materials for the children. We know that it took a lot of work and dedication on your part! We are very grateful to all the people who participated in this project. Without you, we would not have been able to accomplish this. Teamwork! 🙂
The entire festival staff and artists are volunteers as are many, many people in the community that assist during the festival. This is a labor of love for Akumal and our community. This project with Hekab Be is one more example!
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