This community is in great need of children’s programs and assistance with community development projects. Please contact us if you want to connect with this community to help. Thank you! Kristina

Kids Share Workshops visited the Brown Public Library in Northfield, Vermont July, 14. (Please see our slide show below) The summer reading program at the Brown Public Library is traveling around the world by learning about cultures. The children visited Guatemala with Kristina, founder of Kids Share Workshops.

After returning from teaching in Guatemala Kristina shared a presentation and tissue art demonstration.  Kids Share Workshops taught an after school program at PanaKids located in Panajachel, Guatemala for the month of June. Beautiful fabrics, purses, toys, currency and masks were  shared. The children learned about the Mayan children living in the Lake Atitlan region.  Photos were shown from a three day festivity of the Procession of the Saints. The children loved seeing the beautiful costumes. Kristina’s daughter Phoebe shared the Kids Share Song which all the children loved to sing.  Afterwards everyone gathered around to learn about tissue art painting. Kristina explained how the children in Guatemala took their tissue art and decorated recycled containers and journals. She encouraged the children to think about decorating their own recycled containers with their artwork.

A special thanks to Nancy Munno, Youth Services Librarian and all the volunteers who helped make the 1.5 hour program a success!

Kids Share Workshops is looking forward to visiting many schools and libraries in Vermont to share its cross cultural program based in North and Central America. To schedule a 1-2 hour program presentation please contact Kristina at: kidsshareworkshops@gmail.com or call: (802) 485-8406

Thank you for your interest and support in sharing cultures with children!Click to view slideshow.

Our Last two days at PanaKids was a lot of fun! (Please see our slide show below.)

Kids Share Workshops Program is designed for ages 8-16. Teaching kids ages 5-9 was a bit challenging but very rewarding. We were not able to touch on our literacy portion of the workshop but had a lot of fun with Art Projects using recycled materials and tissue art, cross cultural sharing through Technology using Skype and videos, Environmental Education (composting and creating avocado seed containers), and Exploring (the Nature Reserve and Lake).

Day 9 was to be an afternoon at a local campo (fotbal field) playing soccer but a tropical down pour kept us in doors. So plan B was a Movie and Popcorn! The kids really enjoyed watching Hop and hanging out. We did practice our Kids Share song with our new Maracas.

Day 10  our Participation Ceremony went very well and we were thrilled to see so many parents attend. We worked hard to create a slide show with videos sharing our five weeks with the PanaKids. Everyone enjoyed seeing the work and adventures we had! At the end of our presentation each child was handed a prize and a certificate of participation. Julieta, received a special prize for attending every workshop! Before leaving each child took home their creations and posters donated by the Vermont Arts Council. Kids Share Workshops donated the gallons of paint, brushes, containers, smocks and more for future art projects.

We miss our new friends and the wonderful time we had together. We are thankful for the support of PanaKids and volunteers who assisted us. A special thanks to:  Jeanne Ross Atchinson for volunteer teaching and traveling with her daughter to Guatemala, Dina Salpor who did a wonderful job tanslating and teaching with us, PanaKids teachers Astrid and Alison for coordinating our stay in Panajachel and assistance at PanaKids and finally Christina Hussain for her volunteer teaching assistance.

Kids Share Workshops is heading to Oregon and Costa Rica for a site investigation in September. This will be the first workshop working directly with Partners of the Americas by coordinating with both chapters in their communities. Kristina, founder  is flying out to teach and train others the Kids Share Workshop Program in Oregon. Volunteers will learn how to cross culturally share using Kids Share Workshops curriculum with their counter parts in Costa Rica.  Kids Share Workshops is visiting local libraries and schools to share special cross cultural presentations taking place in Central and North America. Please see the next posting sharing the recent presentation and art demonstration at the Brown Public Library in Northfield, Vermont.

With the help of the Alabama and Guatemala Partners of the Americas Chapters, Kids Share Workshops hopes to return to Guatemala.  Stay tuned… Click to view slideshow.

The weather in Vermont must be rather crummy, as we attempted to Skype Phoebe’s Vermont classroom with the PanaKids in the morning but kept getting cut off. Additionally, we attempted a Skype get together with the Boys and Girls Club in the afternoon, but that didn’t work either. Finally we connected with a friend of Jeanne’s in Vermont named Nancy, who had been out in her garden in the rain when she heard her computer ringing.  The children wanted to know about what she was growing in her garden, and what animals she had. Finally, we all sang the Kids Share Song and then moved on to our next project.

Click to view slideshow.We had been collecting medium-sized plastic yogurt containers, and today we brought them all in. Out came the painted tissue paper and the glue, and the children covered the outsides of the containers with the colorful paper. Jeanne peeled off the tops and bottoms off of avocado pits, and the children pushed two toothpicks into each pit and balanced them on top of the beautifully decorated containers. The children will be able to watch as the pits sprout into little avocado trees!

Please join us again next week as we wrap up our Workshop at PanaKids School and move on to Finca Dos Marias up in the cloud forest of Guatemala!

 Phoebe began today’s workshop with the Kids Share Song, and the children are really getting into echoing it with her! Then we got out the paper artist pallets that the kids sketched on yesterday, as well as the tissue paper they had painted earlier in the workshop. With tubs of watered down glue and paint brushes, Kristina demonstrated how she wanted them to fill their sketches in with the tissue paper. Then she and Dina interviewed individual children on video and asked them the questions that the Boys and Girls Club kids in Vermont had for them. Some of the younger children were so shy! It seemed to some that it might be more fun to watch the interviews being made than to be in them!

Meanwhile, Jeanne worked with the group gluing the painted tissue paper onto the paper pallets. Each child took their work very seriously, carefully choosing the colors they wanted, and tearing or cutting out the shapes they wanted. As the pictures filled in they seemed to come alive!

Please click here to read about Day 9 of our Workshop.

When the children got to PanaKids today, Phoebe led the group through a practice of the Kids Share Song, which we often hear them humming while they’re working! We wanted to share the photos we had taken last week with the children, so Jeanne set up the computer and the projector and sat them down in front of the whiteboard. They giggled at the pictures of themselves and the fun they had; it was a great reminder to them of what we had all accomplished!

The weather today was so perfect for a walk by the lake that we didn’t waste any time getting the kids ready to leave. With Dina’s help, we walked through Panajachel two-by-two until we reached the lake. Then we followed a cobblestone path east to a place that had been set up for football games (soccer) with concrete bleachers. We handed out paper artist pallets that had been donated by the Vermont Arts Council, and asked the children to sketch what they saw.

Panajachel is a small town of about 11,000 residents and many tourists. We’re up at around 2,500 feet and are surrounded by the prettiest, steepest green mountains that ebb and flow as they fade off into the distance. This precious land cannot be left completely wild; instead, that which is owned by locals is terraced for growing all sorts of fruits and vegetables on the hillsides. On the north side of Lake Atitlan, Panajachel serves as one of the populated and tourist areas where the indigenous Mayans from the dozen or so villages surrounding the lake can come to sell their amazing weaving and embroidery. Wooden mask carving, marble carving, jewelry (woven and beaded), artistic clay work and textiles round out the offerings of the street vendors.

In another week or so we’ll be heading up into the mountains to Finca Dos Marias (Farm of the Two Marias), and one of the projects we’ll be doing with the children on that farm will be to ask them to think about what they feel represents their lives in the cloud forest of Guatemala. So in preparation for that, we asked our PanaKids to sketch the lake and volcanoes that are such an integral part of their lives on Lake Atitlan. What they drew was amazing! Along with volcanoes, we found in their sketches the sun, boats, fish and birds flying through the clouds. As we were finishing up, a fisherman came in with his nets, and he had caught a bucketful of small fish that the kids enjoyed peering at.

On our way home we sang our Kids Share Song, and the children had big smiles on their faces when they were met by their parents!

Please click here to read about Day 8 of our Workshop.