(Lauren Mimms)
Habitat for Humanity hosted its first ever Winter Festival for children Sunday, Jan. 24 in the Hurvis Room at the Warch Campus Center. Habitat volunteers monitored what seemed to be the happiest 20 children in the world as they visited the different stations.
The children chattered amongst themselves as Disney music blasted from the speakers. Activities included folding origami, cutting paper snowflakes, playing bingo, decorating cookies, playing board games, coloring and best of all, painting ceramic bowls.
At the origami station, four Waseda students patiently taught the children how to make paper cranes and warrior helmets. I tried to help out but my artistic ineptitude usually resulted in making something that was neither a crane nor a helmet, so I decided to move on.
Luckily, the next station involved a board game that I had mastered when I was younger. The objective of “Pretty, Pretty Princess” is to go around the board until you have collected all the jewelry and a crown. If you win, you get to look at your ‘pretty, pretty’ self in a little mirror decorated with jewels. The kids loved it! Some things never seem to get old.
Bingo turned out to be one of the kids’ favorite stations because of the awesome prizes. When they ran out of pirate coloring books and candy necklaces to give away to the children, the bingo station was converted into a coloring booth where two particularly imaginative kids drew Spiderman rescuing a bunny rabbit trapped on an erupting volcano island.
The children’s creativity and hyperactive energy could have been explained by taking a closer look at the cookie decoration station. It turns out that the ‘decoration’ process was basically a contest to see how many sprinkles you could get to stay on the cookie. The cookies were served with hot chocolate to keep the kids as happy and as sugar-high as possible.
Bowl glazing was the main event. On the day before the event, Art Club had volunteered to mold 150 clay bowls for the kids to paint. The children loved all the different colored glazes that Habitat had purchased from The Fire. I was both jealous and in awe of watching these grade-schoolers paint cute, creative designs on the bowls.
When I accidentally got too close to the action, the parents mistook me for an assistant and asked me difficult questions like, “How many layers of glazes should we apply to get the brightest color?” After receiving many disapproving glares when I confessed my ignorance, I took the initiative to find out. The answer, my friends, is three.
The children who attended theWinter Festival definitely had a blast. From the way that the volunteers were belting out “Under the Sea,” it seemed that they were enjoying themselves as well.
The parents loved the opportunity to sit and chat in the adjoining Mead-Witter room and one parent even suggested to co-president Carolyn Schultz that Habitat should hold an event like this one every Saturday.
Although the Winter Festival may not become a weekly occurrence, Habitat seems to be intent on holding this event again next year.
(Lauren Mimms)