When Ukrainian families come to our club, they spend 2 hours here. The first hour is dedicated to free play and lunch, the second hour contains structured group sessions, like art, mindfulness, music, dance and others.

We have been running with this format now for 6 weeks and can see that this hour of play is crucial indeed. One of our key aims in the club is to encourage and facilitate CONNECTIONS between children. This is the basis for other important goals:
– making friends;
– processing their experiences and difficult emotions;
– feeling a valuable member of a community.
When children have a chance to have a free play, they tend to express themselves, speak their language, make friends, play in different roles, get comfortable with space, our staff and other members of our community and experience lots of positive emotions.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY AND LEGO_1
We try to facilitate their play so that they are encouraged to play with each other rather than play with every toy and get overwhelmed. So, we plan and set up different ‘play stations’ for them. Some of the games we’ve had so far were: table tennis, craft table with a different activity each time, marble run, making rings with beads, and building station.
In our building station we often have Lego, with alternative rounds of marble run and magnetic constructor. Kids have so much fun with Lego, week after week! 
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY AND LEGO 2
We had different themes with Lego building, like ‘Build a town’. We had races where kids built cars out of lego and raced each other to see whose car will run the longest distance. This fun race was run by Dasha Giraffskaya and her wonderful assistants, her sons. In our last week we had a competition on the best building.
Lego is a big part of our free play activity. We are so grateful for all donations of Lego that we’ve had so far. Lots of amazing people have stepped in and brought their unused or new Lego so that kids could play. Thank you to Thea Jacob, Tatiana Hoggarth, Clive Goodhead, Louise Lawrence, Jeni Wood, Gemma Gavin, Catherine Haynemeyer, Claudine Pelser who have so kindly have helped us out!
And a special ‘Thank you!’ to my friend Dasha Giraffskaya and her boys who have thoroughly cleaned all lego and sorted it out for us! You are incredible!
Yes, a lot of work behind the scenes, but SO worth it!

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