Tag Archives: kids

Caribbean Zoo with Kids

One bird.

IMG_1489

Two birds.

IMG_1452

Red bird.

IMG_1586

Blue bird.

IMG_1478

These colorful birds are just a sample of the animals at Sint Maarten’s zoo. Although the zoo is small, it has more than enough animals to delight anyone. There is a lot that makes this place special. One of those special things is that much of the zoo consists of endemic animals.

Endemic [en-dem-ik]  (Adjective):

“Belonging exclusively or confined to a particular place.”

This morning, Les Fruits de Mer, an organization dedicated to preserving and educating about the islands natural environment, hosted the Endemic Animal Festival at the zoo! The zoo was open to the public for free for three hours. I’ve been wanting to take some of the kids from our little league team to the zoo for a while now, so I was happy when Coach Tom asked for volunteers to drive the kids from the baseball field to the event.

IMG_1449

There is nothing quite like exploring the zoo through the eyes of a child. I love to see toucans, but even more, I love seeing little eyes light up when they see toucans.

IMG_1556

The Endemic Animal Festival was awesome. There were several activities for the kids: little jars of shrimp to examine, a checklist of animals separated in endemic and non-endemic categories, sidewalk chalk, and coloring. Anilda loved the coloring and crafts! I was impressed with the volunteers. They were so sweet with the kids, attentive to them, and made learning about the animals fun.

IMG_1524

The boys explored the zoo while Anilda colored. We caught up with them later, and here are a few of the things we saw:

Some of the boys were particularly interested in the snakes. Sint Maarten doesn’t have any snakes in wild, because European settlers released mongooses to kill them off. I tried to get a picture of the zoo’s mongoose, but it made a wicked fang face at me and hid in the shadows. Although the wild has no snakes, the zoo has a nice collection. Gabby was fascinated by a small snake that some of the volunteers and zoo staff were holding. They even let Gabby hold it for a minute!

IMG_1618

A few hours after the event, Ben and I went exploring on Green Cay. We saw an Anguilla bank anole lizard, and Ben pointed it out to me. “That’s an endemic animal,” he informed me. I guess everyone learned something new today! What wonderful memories.

A Juice Box

I got the best present ever today. It was a Capri Sun juice box.

Today, as the Little League team I help coach was starting the first inning, six-year-old Anilda came to sit beside me in the dugout. Anilda is the sister of one of our players, and she’s always around when baseball stuff is going on. Anilda’s as adorable as they come. Her strongest language is French, so sometimes I can’t understand her accent and she can’t always understand mine, but we get along just fine. She also thinks it’s hysterical that she’s tri-lingual and I just speak English. Today is April Fools Day, so Anilda had all her best jokes in a mental queue, just waiting for each new person she ran into. My shoes were untied, Stacey magically appeared beside me, and there was a spider on my head. Oh, yes. The usual. And all of it accompanied by a great big, front-tooth-gap six-year old grin and giggles galore.

About a half hour in, Anilda got hungry and asked if she could get her dinner from the snack bar. She showed me her cash: Two dollars for the hot dog and a third for a juice box. Two juice boxes, actually, she told me. Two for a dollar. And she was definitely looking forward to it.

I let her go get her dinner on a break between innings and walked far enough over so that I could see her and still keep track of the pitch count in my head.  She reached in tippy-toes to push her cash onto the counter, grabbed the hot dog in one hand and the Capri Suns in the other, and we hurried back to the dugout.

She stabbed one juice packet with a straw, started sipping, and handed the other to me. “Is this for me?” I asked. She nodded.

When you’re six, fifty cents is a lot of money. Probably, the only money you own is the money your dad gave you for dinner. And a Capri Sun is nothing to sniff at. Giving it to someone else is a pretty big sacrifice, when you’re six.

I felt like I had just been given the moon.

It’s funny how when a kid gives you something like that, it multiplies the value of the object. I could buy a hundred Capri Sun juices if I wanted to. But she could only buy two, and she gave me one of them. And that makes it mean a lot.

I think that’s how it is with us and God. God “owns the cattle on a thousand hills,” yet he loves it when we give him an hour of the day to volunteer at Sunday School or twenty bucks to feed the hungry. Why do we give God our stuff, our time, our money? Not because he needs it, but because he loves it. Just like I don’t need a child to buy me a juice box, but I love that she did and it made my day.

12032201_10153554103015255_2014865610218445406_n
Photo Credit: Stacey Culpepper

Art in the Park and Canada!

We’re bound for Canada! But first, we’re participating in Art in the Park right here at home. One of my favorite memories of my childhood hometown is Art in the Park. Flagstaff, Arizona held it this festival annually on the lawn of the library. It’s something I missed when we moved to Phoenix. Now that we live in Sint Maarten, Art in the Park is back on the agenda!

FullSizeRender (4)
Some of my paintings that will be for sale at Art in the Park 

The best of SXM Art in the Park for me is that I get to be a part of a booth this time. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that I volunteer with a local Little League team that incorporates academics into its daily program. This summer, we all get to take a trip to Canada to watch the Blue Jays play! The Rotary Club is sponsoring the trip, but of course we are teaching the boys responsibility by having them fund-raise as well.

TRAIN (3)

 

The kids have been working on their merchandise for a long time. Coach Tom and his wife, Lisa, came up with some great ideas. The team has a rock tumbler, and they’ve polished a couple hundred rocks over the last few months. We’ll put magnets on these and sell them for a few dollars. The kids are also making lanterns with a Canadian maple leaf on the front. I’ll be contributing some of my paintings to the fundraiser, as well.

FullSizeRender (2).jpg
K. shows off one of her favorite rocks

Here’s how we made the rock magnets:

  1. The kids ran around the baseball field, gathering various little rocks.

12140161_10153247702906483_1255518858786418710_o.jpg

2. The first week, Tom tumbled the rocks with some abrasive. They came out clean, but still pretty rough. The kids washed all the gritty gray liquid off and Tom added new abrasive.

3. The second week and third weeks, the rocks were tumbled again.

12658053_10153464442276483_2263971176278255188_o

905591_10153294141401483_3205024500829125182_o
A. found an amethyst!

4. The fourth week was the last week of tumbling. This kids washed them off and shined them. We put a little lacquer on them to make them even prettier.

12657874_10153465447661483_2250046046675070850_o.jpg

5. Finally, we glued the magnets on the back. They’re ready to add some natural beauty to your fridge!

The older boys worked with volunteers to drill holes in coffee cans for the lanterns. Then everyone had a chance to paint the leaves Canada red.

Stacey and I are working on an informational display for the festival, too. All the kids and volunteers traced their hands on the background.

If you’re on Saint Martin, come visit us this Sunday (February 14) at Emilio Wilson Park in Cul de Sac between 10 and 4:30! Just head to Philipsburg, take the round-a-bout north instead of heading east to Cost-U-Less, and look for the park on your left a little past the baseball field. Let’s send these kids to Canada!

12672192_10153461334756483_4831235279881369713_o
One of our boys and Fred, a real, live Canadian! Also, note volunteer Andrea’s enthusiasm in the background. We have fun here.

 

 

 

Thanks to Stacey and Tom for providing the pictures for this post!