Education in chacala

If you are visiting Playa Chacala just for a few days or for a few months there are many possibilities for you to get involved in education, either to learn something new or pass on something you already know.

Many holiday makers like to have Spanish lessons, utilizing the chance to practice their new

skills whilst  enjoying an interactive village experience.

Our local Chacala teacher is Trini who is a qualified educationalist and excellent tutor.

You can arrange a one to one class or participate in a group session.

Trini

Another fantastic opportunity is to volunteer with Chacala’s after school program, organised by members of Cambiando Vidas, our scholorship program.

ASPIRE After School Program Interactions Relationships Education

We refer to this as Mission: Possible as we believe that all missions are possible and with our extensive volunteer team we have given the primary school children some wonderful experiences including cookie baking and decorating, sculpturing, charcoal drawing, pickle ball, art to music, yoga dance, bingo, chess and music to mention just some!

To volunteer please speak to Susana at Casa Pacifica who will put you in touch with Jill Hanna, our resident ASPIRE coordinator and retired teacher.

You can work with just one or two children or a small group and Raul, who is a bilingual student in our Chacala scholarship program, is on hand to help with any language barriers or crowd control!

Art to music – an inspiring creative activity

Pickle Ball

Yoga dance

Here is a personal testimony from one of our resident volunteers, Marcy Swan:

Cookies in Chacala!

I showed the children how to make cookies every other Tuesday. The first week I made a batch of sugar cookies in front of them. Then I rolled out the dough and they got to press in cookie cutters to make about three cookies each. I put those on the baking sheets and baked them in the kitchen’s oven. (I learned that it does not bake evenly. :-/) I had a batch of sugar cookies already baked that I let the children frost with the frosting that I made in front of them. As the cookies came out of the oven, they were able to frost and decorate those, too.

The next time, I had five mixing bowls and I had the children divide in teams of 2 or 3 to make their own batch of chocolate chip cookies. I also had a batch already baked that they were able to eat while their cookies baked. Once again, issues with the oven not baking evenly, but the cookies they made were eaten anyway.

The next time we made oatmeal raisin cookies. There were about three sets of kids making their own batch. This time the kitchen was locked, so I let the kids take home the dough to have their moms bake them. One young man didn’t have an oven, so I baked his at my house and took his batch to him the next day.

This last time we made Frosted Grahams. i had to bring the graham crackers from the States because I couldn’t find any in Mexico. I made the frosting in front of the kids and then let them each use five graham crackers to frost. That was a quick and easy project.

BINGO in Chacala!

The children played Bingo every Tuesday we didn’t make cookies. I made up a Bingo game using English words and pictures. I had 15 words each of Emotions, Directions, Body Parts, Animals and Nature. I had the children use mini-marshmallows as tokens for their Bingo cards. They won sweets–usually white cupcakes. I also let them have cookies and pop while playing. This was an easy game and the children seemed to like it. I usually had three winners per game so everyone had a chance to win at least once.

Marcy Swan