Back to Basics in Perú

School summer holidays here in Peru are in January & February. So as to ensure that our children receive consistent education, have a safe & secure place to be, receive at least one meal a day and enjoy themselves!

We run Vacaciones Utiles during these months i.e. Summer school. It’s entirely run by the volunteers & Edyluz (for January) as the teachers are on holiday as well. Our new Interns Mariya & Chris joined us at the start of the month, so a huge welcome to them!

2009 is off to a great start and our summer schools are off and running, and doing brilliantly! We spend the mornings in Maldonado & walk over to spend the afternoons in Triunfo.



Our theme is back to basics, and we’re focusing on drilling in the basics in Math & Communication (reading & writing), with some English, Art & PE thrown in as well. It’s really giving us the chance to focus on the areas the children are struggling with, and give them much needed one on one time, in order to have them prepared and in a better position for when the academic year starts in March.

The children and parents love the attention and advancement the children are receiving, we’re already up to 44 children at Maldonado & 24 at Triunfo!

In grades 1° & 2° Mariya & Allan have been focusing on reading comprehension and writing skills. Including teaching the new members of grade 1° (some coming from Inicial, others not having received any form of education until now) how to hold a pencil & control it, and developing their basic motor skills through a variety of techniques.

Their recent art lesson saw the children get creative making masks, after much excitement when the glitter glue came out we managed to get them to focus! The result was a room of super heroes & baddies!!

Chris & Jennie have been tackling creative writing, professions, symmetry, math problems and fractions with grades 3° & 4°. It’s pretty cramped at Maldonado with up to 16 children in that class, but they’ve been doing fantastically!

Ivan is really knuckling down and showing improvements every single day, he came top in the recent spelling test. When discussing professions it emerged that we have a class room of budding Doctors, Mining Engineers, Soldiers, Police Officers, Chefs, Teachers and Lawyers!

The children then discussed what they believed they would need to study at University in order to follow these careers! Absolutely fantastic to hear them talking about “when I go to University I’m going to study.....”!! Ayda at Triunfo received some much needed one on one as she was seriously struggling with the concept of fractions (join the club!), but now understands and is able to correctly complete all her work.

Carole’s been working with grades 5° & 6°, and seeing great development in their logical math understanding, looking at number patterns, multiplication, division, logic problems and now fractions.

Viriginia who’s joining us officially (Maldonado) as of this March (Lourdes & Biancia’s cousin) was struggling a lot, but after just 2 weeks is showing real improvements! The children’s reading & listening comprehension is also being expanded, using story CD’s, this will lead to more lessons on creative writing and the structure of stories.

Edyluz at Maldonado has been working hard with the children that are going on to Secondary school. It’s been great to see them attending our summer school both at Triunfo & Maldonado, so as to firm up on subjects prior to March.

Sunday 25th January was the 14th anniversary of the Victor Maldonado community. There was a huge party in the cancha (sports court), and a big dance competition which our children of course participated in. They were up against adult groups, and did fantastically and ......won 2nd place!!!! They and us were so proud, their first trophy!!!

Our team has now grown with the arrival of Kaitlyn, Caroline, Billy, Garth, Carly and Rosie. So summer school is just going to get better & better!

Back to Basics in Perú