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Saturday, May 24, 2008

Kidz Safari

The day has finally arrived. I'm sure the kids must have looked forward to this day. We had some order in this safari carnival. Every child must register and have a tag before entering the compound. Some kids came early. They wandered into the compound and had some trial runs with the games. At 9AM we shooed them to the registration counter where they received not only a tag but a minimum of 20 playcards. Some had more because they brought their friends to children's church or they were new comers and some earned them by participating in class. The 6 and 7 years old were given green tags and had to be accompanied by their parent/s or guardian. The 8 - 12 years had their tags in blue.

Aunt Chris made the lion's face cake. Every child who registered were allowed to guess the weight of the cake.
There were about 16 games for the children to play. Crocodile Alert was one of the chilren's favourite. The game consists of a man made fishing stick with hook attached at the end of the string and a few crocodiles with hooks punctured into their bodies. Rajen manned the game and he made the childen line up. I think he changed the rules a little. He made the children compete with one another. Each round consists of 2 chilren who would try to hook 4 crocs under a minute.

Hmmm... I think the children didn't know what game this was. Not many played this game. The game goes like this - the first person is given a sentence to draw out. The second person has to guess what it is.. in under a minute I think.

This game looks easy but it's hard. The children had to hook the bottles under a minute.

Splash! Well, there should be a pool under the ladder. The idea is to hit the stuff toys till it falls off the ladder. Notice I didn't use the word stuff "animals"? :)

Yes, we had food for the kids and volunters too. Thanks to Aunty Pang who was in charged of food.
The original name was "spot what". We got this from Sze-En's spot what books and enlarged it many times over. There were items that were right infront of your face and you couldn't spot it.

Safari Dropping??!! Who came up with this name? LOL. I painted some colours in the egg tray. The kids were given 3 tries. If the ping pong ball land on the coloured one, you get a point.

The volunteers manning this game must be real tired picking up the cans and balls after a throw. Imagining picking up 9 cans and a rolling tennis ball after each throw.

Feeing the monkey with real banana. Some shorter children are allowed to stand on the chair to play this game. There's a tactic for this... you ask Yoke Chan and she will tell you. :)

This game is so easy. The black "dots'" are the softer velcro and the harder part of velcro is stuck to the ping pong balls. The children are given 3 tries. It's easy because if the ball will roll down and eventually get stuck to the next spot. Of course there will be some children who don't know how to throw properly.

This is a simple game too, but the lion is so short and many children don't know how to aim. Ai yah. adults also find it hard to aim.

I thought this won't be a popular game but I see many children had the patience to try this game.

Originaly, this game was called Kim's game. I learn this game during my Brownie years. We had safari animals on the table and the kids were given some time to remember who came to the party. I thought this would be easy, but apparently Juliet (person in charge) had to modify the game. She ask them to name a few animals only.. even that some of them didn't get it right.

This game was interesting. Someone would have to sacrifice their face and get a face wash in return. The children were supposed to "invite" their teachers for a facewash. The teachers were so busy with their stalls, good ol Qing & Jian volunteered to sit behind Mr Tiger. Then later we had teachers Rajen and Aunt Chris to get their face washed too.

Rachel Wong and Danny manned this stall. They had to promote their stall because no one knows how to play this game. Finally Michael Lim and another boy were their first "customers". The game goes like this - One of their foot is bound to one another making two of them 3-legged . Then they have to step on every spot without touching the grass.

Michael Lim and his friend came for more tries because they don't have to queue and they were certain to win the tokens. They wanted to exchange the tokens for an MP3.

So when the childen had finished their allocated playcards, they can earn more from the memorising corner. There are 2 categories. First, put the books of the bible in order. They kids were given the list to memorise. Then the list would be taken away and they had to put the books in order. Second, memory verses. The older they are, the more words they have to memorised. Eddie helped in this stall. When he saw Sze-En, he gave her the 12 year old one to memorise. Poor Sze-En. She gave up and Eddie laughed. Then he gave her the 8year old one and she did it.

This game... well.. not many takers. I cut out so many tails and not many were used. The kids find it hard to reach up to the elephant's butt.!!! They rather fed the monkey up on the tree.

I saw many chilren playing this game. It's quite easy. Just throw the loop to the general direction of the giraffes. It will sure get hooked to mama giraffe or baby giraffe. :)

This is the best part. The children get to exchange their tokens with gifts. The tokens were given to the chilren when they won in the games. Each token - 1 sen coin was painted green on one side. The most expensive gifts were marked at 100 tokens and that includes bibles and MP3s.

At 11AM, I was tired. I was taking pictures, tryiny to capture the whole safari. At 11AM, the kids were suppose to go and watch a movie. We bought it from the States, and it was a documentary on animals. I don't think the kids enjoyed it. Because less than 10 minutes, most of them walked off.
At 12.40pm, the rain came and dampen the children's mood. The teachers of course were happy because they can rest. It rained till the closing, so most stalls were closed but the games played under the tent still had to go on.


At 2PM, Aunt Chris announced the winners for the guess the weight of the cake competition. I think 8 children guess correctly - 3KG. Two of them went back early. So their share was kept for them in the fridge.

Overall, the kids enjoyed themselves. They played hard, earned their tokens and exchanged gifts with them. It's more than thr RM2.00 they paid for when they register.

Should we do this again next year? I don't know. So much work for 5 hours... but then, it's so nice to see the children having fun. :)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great ideas. Now you've given me some thoughts about how to handle Safari during Book Week. Kath Campbell Eden PS

euniceta said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
euniceta said...

Hi Kath, The ideas were mostly from my sister and aunt. I just helped with the painting, finding the materials for the games, tagging, and all those odd jobs. :)

We had another Kidz Safari this year too with additional games. You can check it out in my June 6, 2009 post.

http://euniceta.blogspot.com/2009/06/kidz-safari-2009.html

Jody McDonnell said...

I was awenspired by your day. I was just looking for a quiz I can not believe what you were able to put together for this safari. Congratulations.