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5 Days of Fostering Creativity during Short Term Summer Fun
27th-31st July 2026:
The second week of Short Term Summer Fun took place under the theme “Creativity” in Criseni. Next to creating fun experiences for the children, the goal was to help them foster their creativity through arts and crafts.
Every day the camp started with some music and a dance. On Monday the children were taught the first steps of the “Cotton-Eye Joe” dance. This was followed by the kids learning each other’s (and the volunteers) names. As the first craft of the week, the children created their own covers for little booklets. The booklets were filled with different small tasks they had to perform each day. By creating the covers themselves and having no bounds set to their creativity, each child could create an individual booklet. Aside from paper and pens, cotton and crepe paper were used to make masterpieces! After a short snack break the rest of the day was spent playing “Remember ball”, an active sports game which the kids absolutely adored. The day ended with some feedback from the children and the daily leaving ritual.
Tuesday began with some short games to get to know each other. The craft of the day was making salt dough. After making the clay-like material the children created various trinkets using cookie cutters and clay equipment. Once again, there were no limits as to what they could make which lead to wonderfully individual results such as jewelry trays, pendants and pizza -shaped trinkets. Afterwards the dough was set out to dry and harden until the end of the week. The sports activity was made up of three variations of tag games which the children truly enjoyed after all the sitting during the craft.
On Wednesday the children had to find natural materials in the garden in different colors. These materials were later used to decorate paper flowers the kids created with the help from the volunteers. This was followed by an official football match and a dance lesson as well as the daily leaving ritual.
The following the day the craft activity was creating monsters. Once again, the creativity of the kids was demanded, as they only received paper cups and crafting materials. With the help of glue, paper and googly eyes, volcano monsters, Frankensteins and zombies were created. This was followed by an obstacle course, which they really enjoyed (especially Boti).
The last day of the week was bittersweet. The children spent the morning decorating the trinkets they created from salt dough and played various ballgames afterwards. Although all of them had a fantastic time, the day did bring some sadness, as the children were disappointed that the camp was already finished. After receiving the final feedback from the kids which was very positive, the volunteers too felt sad to see the children go.
Overall it was a very successful and enjoyable week, during which the children could foster their creativity and enjoy time with other people.
