Another day grandparenting!

For a couple of years now, we have dreamed of this day! Yep! The children at Pat’s Place have a wonderful roof-top area, which is chain-link fence walls and peak. It is here they kick their soccer balls, play volleyball, shoot baskets, and ride their tricycles. Momma’s do the family wash in the laundry room and the kids are short enough that they play ‘under’ the clothes lines and think nothing of it! But what is it exactly we’ve been dreaming about? Improving the play area!

There’s a college girl here for two weeks, and she is providing the labor while we provided the materials, game dimensions, rules and regulations for Four Square, Hop scotch, and Tic, Tac, Toe! We went to Lima with Alison and purchased the masking tape, bright yellow paint, and brush. Found a tape measure at our house, and printed out the information necessary from the internet. The dream is in the process of becoming a reality!

Alison began to lay out the Four Square boundaries with tape and the kids pitched in right away. Soon it was the older girls measuring and laying the tape. It went really well, with a lot of excitement and Don and I didn’t have to get down on the cement on all fours! With our limited Spanish we kept encouraging the children as they worked away. Alison’s Spanish is much like ours, so together we found the words necessary to communicate what was needed and to manage our nine Peruvian “helpers”.

Once the Four Square layout was finished, the painting of the lines was next and they all wanted their turn. It was a challenge to keep them from walking on the painted lines, or tipping over the can, or dipping the brush in too far, but the first coat was completed in no time at all.

During this time, two girls began to layout the Tic, Tac, Toe lines and managed to complete the measuring and laying of tape with very little assistance. One 11 year old stayed with the project from beginning to end so we allowed her to paint as much of the lines as she wanted. She was very diligent in her work and everyone was pleased with the end results. We had to find some Xs and Os to play the game, but being resourceful people, we chose to take a walk down the street a block to a place we had seen some broken tiles in the sand. They had been there for several weeks so we were not sure if they would still be there or not. We found just what we needed. We picked up 18 pieces about 1-2” in size and brought them back home. They are a beautiful shiny royal blue on one side, and of course the reverse is clay colored. It was decided that the clay colored side be painted bright yellow as well. That way no Xs or Os would be needed, the players would choose and use either the blue or yellow tile as their color when playing the game.

Hop Scotch took a longer period of time to layout, so one of the 15 year old mothers did it when when the children were at school one day. Then when they returned home it was a surprise, they helped paint the lines, and we used plastic clothespins of different colors for them to identify their playing piece.

The basketball hoop is a basket inside an old ring, and there is no court or foul line. The volleyball net has seen better days, and again there are no boundary lines. There is no soccer field, just an open space for them to kick the ball. And here’s the other interesting thing…..they use the same ball for all three games. You see, here in Peru, we do what we gotta do!