Punta Banco is a small village at the end of a dirtroad in the southwest of Costa Rica (Golfo Dulce). The village is right at the blacksanded (volcanic) beach which borders the Pacific ocean with its big and beautiful waves, and is surrounded by hills and rainforest. It consists of a church, a soccerfield, a school, a minisuper, 3 sodas (restaurants) and 8 places that rent cabinas (rooms/cabins). About 100 people live in Punta Banco, and much of Costa Ricas wildlife can be spotted in the area.
About 25 children between the age of 5 and 12 attend the local school and the library mostly focuses on these schoolkids.
We started with about 10 books in 2009 and expanded the constantly growing collection with adult books as well. You can find a list of our books here and a description of our activities below.
Since the country depends greatly on tourism, a large part of the inhabitants speak at least some English. Punta Banco is still pretty untouched by tourism though and so the locals in this village hardly speak any English, including the teachers at the local school. Therefore we also organize activities around learning English to the children.
Library Punta Banco is completely run by volunteers. The costs of the project are mostly paid by the locals, since we organize clothingsales in the village where they can buy cheap clothes starting at 300 colones ($0.50) to 8000 colones ($16). Since the nearest clothingshops are a 2 hour drive by car and a 3 hour drive by bus, this is a great success. We get the clothes mostly from tourists and expats from the US and Europe that visit or live in this area, mostly second hand, but we had some gifts of brand new clothes from surfbrands in Holland (Protest and Volcom) too! In the first year we collected about $1000 this way and we use the money to buy supplies for the library. At the moment we are planning on finding or building our own building (since we still use the lunchroom and a storageroom of the school) so in the future we will need money for that. Of course donations are always welcome too. Click here for more information about donating.
OUR ACTIVITIES
We read books to the children, or children can read books for themselves or to other children.
The children all love coloring and even the bigger kids (12+) and mothers sometimes drop in to do some coloring, so we make sure to have enough coloring pencils, crayons and markers for them to use. We also do little art projects that involve drawing, cutting, coloring, gluing.
In March of 2010 we got our first two laptops, on which the children can play educational games. There are games for children who never used a computer before that involve learning to use the mouse/trackpad and learning to find the letters at the keyboard. Other games all stimulate their cognitive or creative qualities in some way, playing and learning in one!
Activities around learning English are :
Playing picturebingo. The bingo card has pictures of animals, fruits, vegetables or other objects and when we call the English word for it they have to find it on their bingocard. When they have BINGO they get a little surprise.
Making a picture dictionary. All children got their own notebook and can browse through old magazines to cut out pictures they like and glue them into their notebook. They write the Spanish word next to it and we teach and show them the English word and than they can write this word next to the picture as well. Sometimes we let them look for certain pictures to keep them motivated and excited.
Flashcards. Just repeating the English words after us. They love making lots of noise and it works well to get rid of their energy and in the meantime learn some English! Or sometimes we sit outside on a blanket underneath the almondtree and just practice words with them there. All very relaxed.
Listening to music. We play childrens songs, sometimes in the background of some other activity, sometimes we explain the words and we sing and dance with the children.
Watching videos. We have a collection of educational childrens videos (like Dora and Diego) and nature documentaries. All in English.
