Wasilkow Santiago by Santiago Cocca

1st Week - Presentations

coccasantiagoa — 2025-10-24 09:52:24 UTC

During our first week as volunteers, Irene from Spain and I, Santiago from Argentina, introduced ourselves to the students at School No. 1 in Wasilków.
We spent time both in the Świetlica and in different classes throughout the week, showing the children where our countries are on the map and explaining how many hours it takes to travel there.
We also tried to interact with them as much as possible so they could get to know us better and feel more comfortable speaking with us. Then we made them colour these flags and try to mix them in the same paper on Thursday and Friday this week in Świetlica.

2nd Week - European Day of Languages

coccasantiagoa — 2025-10-24 10:12:52 UTC

In the second week, I was on my own because Irene was attending a training in Warsaw.
During the week, in the classes I had, I gave a presentation about the evolution of tourism, where the students participated by mentioning different methods of transport and understanding why are we so lucky to be in this period and they shared places they would like to visit.

However, the most important day was Wednesday, when we invited Valentín and Lucía from Spain, and Francesco from Italy to our school. We worked in pairs to give presentations about the European Day of Languages.
I presented together with Valentín, and we talked about different foreign communities in the world, thinking about Poland and how migration and emigration affects countrie's history and present.

3rd week - Argentina and sustainable travel

coccasantiagoa — 2025-10-24 18:17:03 UTC

During the third week, we focused on the topic of sustainable travel.
We prepared a short presentation to explain what it means to travel in an eco-friendly way, and then we played a bingo game with basic Spanish words so the students could keep practicing the language in a fun way.
In the Świetlica, we also started to learn about the first country of our project: Argentina. The children made a puzzle of the Argentine flag and looked at different landscapes, trying to match them with the correct regions of the country.

4th Week - A bit of Spanish

coccasantiagoa — 2025-10-24 20:36:31 UTC

During the fourth week, we focused on simple Spanish expressions.
In the classes, we showed an easy song in Spanish with phrases like I’m tired, I’m hungry, or I’m great. The students practiced by asking each other “Hola, ¿cómo estás?” and answering with one of those expressions, or by playing Simon Says and copying the gestures from the video.
In the Świetlica, we talked about Spain, and the children created their own versions of the traditional “azulejos”, the colorful tiles that are very typical in the south of the country.

Week 5 - Spanish Flashcards and Italy

coccasantiagoa — 2025-11-12 10:25:36 UTC

Last week of October and during the lessons we learned many new words with flash cards of Spanish like a “Sapo” (frog) “Pájaro” (bird) etc. Apart from that, we remembered some sentences that we learned the previous week. In Swietlica we went to a very special country for Irene and me that is Italy. We created our own pasta dishes, we made masks of Venice’s Festival and we tried to recreate some famous Italian places like Pisa’s tower or Trevi’s fountain

Week 6 -Exchange Letters and Egypt

coccasantiagoa — 2025-11-12 10:27:11 UTC

First week of November and we started our new project with 12 groups of the school, this project

is called “Exchange Letters” and we are gonna do it with 12 groups in order to send letters to Valencia, Spain. We started it doing the introduction of our selves on a draft. In Swietlica, we went to Egypt and we did piramids, a big river with agriculture based on a story about the invention of Mathematics and Agriculture Egyptian system and also jeroglifics based on our names

Week 6,5 - Christmas Letter

coccasantiagoa — 2025-12-12 10:23:16 UTC

This week was short because of the Indepence day’s holiday long weekend but I started with the 2nd part of the project that is related to writing about Christmas 🎄. For example, with the youngest I put some sentences like We eat and then they would fill the blank with some Polish food, I am with… and say family members and then The weather is… and write something like cold, sometimes snowy, etc.

Week 7 - Scandinavia and Project update

coccasantiagoa — 2025-12-12 10:39:45 UTC

Almost a month and this group of volunteers is so excited to share how work is going. We try to keep going Świetlica project despite all of the challenges related with the 12 groups that are working on the project, that’s why we are going to Scandinavia this week and the next one. Related with the project, we tried to catch up on the other groups because the ones from Monday and Tuesday were one class behind. With the last mentioned, we did the same as last week but with the ones from wednesday to friday we spent time singing Christmas Carols and starting to write the final version.

Week 8 - Christmas Decoration

coccasantiagoa — 2025-12-14 16:25:44 UTC

As you can read in the title, this week we gave time to children to prepare their Christmas letters decorations and rewrite their drafts, even more with the ones week behind. We coordinated with teacher to make the students absent do their final work, we sang Christmas carols with other groups too and we made some letters of us as volunteers to send also to students in Spain because maybe there were some groups with more people there. It was also fun all the activities related with Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden that we did such as typical Viking Helmets or discover different national animals.

Week 9 - Japan and Letters sent

coccasantiagoa — 2025-12-14 16:39:50 UTC

This week we returned to Świetlica as our mainly activity, this time focusing on Japan. We did several creative activities with the children, such as designing their own version of the Japanese flag, making koi fish, teru teru bōzu and Sakura trees. Kids really enjoyed working on these country’s art crafts throughout the week.

In the first-grade classes, we also did an activity related to St. Nicholas Day, where students practised English through drawing and simple vocabulary. They worked with animals, colours and emotions, exchanged their papers and created drawings for each other. We also gave them some Christmas gifts to remind us 😁

Week 10 - Australia and the beginning of the end

coccasantiagoa — 2025-12-14 17:00:26 UTC

Regarding the volunteer’s day, we received a nice portrait with some photos taken from Świetlica time so here I wanted to show our appreciation for this present 🫶🏻. This week, we went to Australia as our last country to conclude this Multicultural mural where we “visit” many countries with children through art craft activities.

Here, is this beautiful painting that kids made that show how varied and unique is Australia’s fauna. With this country, we complete all continents. During our lessons, we did a nice simulated market where they could buy and sell and learn some vocabulary related to that like: It costs… or I want… With one 7th grade, we also did a very nice activity that came to our mind about a Historical Spanish Quizzes where we passed by many key moments and events.

Week 11 - The last dance :(

coccasantiagoa — 2025-12-21 00:41:39 UTC

Writing this on my way back home, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone here in this photo and every student, teacher or school staff member that with a short/long talk or maybe just nodding their head in the corridors collaborated with us to make this experience as beautiful as it was. Fortunately, we received some letters from 4 different groups of Spain, so, we could share this material with children and see their reactions and first impressions. We also did a final video to say goodbye to kids and school that has been posted in Anawoj’s Instagram account and also some kids at school saw it. Thanks and more thanks for this unforgettable experience. Do widzenia Wasilków & Polska. 🫶🏻🫶🏻