Spitchino Orphanage


	A message from Discipler Yana Bardashevich

I even didn’t notice how this school year passed. There`s a right saying that time flies. This year gave me a wonderful opportunity – to give something special to the orphans, to understand their hard life and try to do everything to make it better. Your help is great here, of course.

Every child is special here and has their own talents, personality, interests. I was very surprised that these kids are always busy with something. Everyone visit various hobby groups – musical, basketball, volleyball, fitness, embroidering. During this year they made wonderful crafts, painted nice pictures and performed different concerts.

The staff of the Spitchino orphanage would like to thank you for your help and support to the orphanage and our kids. The children are really looking forward to you visiting our orphanage. We hope to continue our friendship and we are looking forward to seeing you again too. We wish you good luck. Thank you very much for love, care and support!


	Discipleship lessons

I visited the kids two times in a week and every time I tried to bring something new to them and interest them. During the last three months we had conversations about very important topics Learning to Say NO, Healthy Way of Living, Life Values. As there are a lot of graduates I brought special forms for them to help them to discover their interests for their future career choices. Not to make our conversation boring I always try to make some hand outs, or slide presentations. I also told them about dreams and interesting facts about them. The kids were involved in the conversation and asked questions. Little kids like to play games very much. We played board games, outdoor games. They were very excited to do Hidden Pictures, rebuses, crosswords and puzzles. Also, they are fond of drawing and painting. We had a quiz with them dedicated to the Russian fairytales, everybody showed their knowledge and got a little prize at the end. All the kids just love watching movies and cartoons which I bring them in my laptop. Last cartoon we watched was Up. After watching it, I asked them several questions about the content and the lesson it teaches us.

The children are very glad that they have pen friends. They are looking forward to getting letters and answer them with pleasure. It is a pity that I won`t see the kids for the whole summer as they are going to summer camps and I am going to miss them as I became attached to them. Last time I visited them I showed them a slide show with all the pictures taken by me. Everybody was able to see himself/herself and watch how they have grown up for the last two years!


	The letter from the kids

We are happy to write to you again and to tell you everything that happened to us during these three months and about our plans for summer. Our academic year is finished, and we are ready to have our most exciting vacations – summer vacations. We are so happy to have three month rest after such a difficult school year. Sorry to say, not all of us have got good marks for the subjects at school but we tried our best. Our graduates are still preparing to take their final exams and to get their school leaving certificate. It is a great pity that they are going to leave us. Maybe, new children will come and we will have more friends next year. Who knows.

We saw Mother Winter off. We performed two concerts in the kindergartens. Also, we went to the local musical school to watch the concert where talented children played different musical instruments. On the 17th of March there were competitions in winter polyathlon held among all the orphanages in Kirov Region. Artem A., Artem T., Zhenya M., Lena M., Vika Sh., Alyona K. took part there and Vova P. and Zhenya V. toolk the second place there. After this event our two rock stars Zhenya F and Sasha S. played their drums and guitars. So, there was a disco for the participants and fans.

Every Sunday we continue going to church that is situated in the small village not far from here. Some of the kids were baptized recently.

We were very happy when in the end of March our American friends visited us. They were here just two days but we still remember that bright event. We communicated with them, played games, went to the Peasants` Museum, and showed them our talents. We had great fun! I hope you are able to come and visit us this summer too. Every one of us received a letter and now we have pen friends! That`s exciting!

Our spring vacations were also interesting. Our caregivers always prepare something for us and this time there was another contest. We chose Mister and Miss of the orphanage. They are Alexey N and Nastya V. They really deserved it! Our caregiver Michail Leonidovich organized a darts competition for us. Also, we went for a walk, played snowballs, and cleaned the territory from snow. Now it is warm outside, everything is blooming and green, the sun shines brightly and we spent a lot of time outside, playing, running, enjoying good weather.

In April some of us went to Kirov during Easter. We met with parson there and took part in the contest The Stars of Childhood. In the beginning of May we cleaned the territory of the orphanage. So, we had so called subbotnik.

There was another competition in soccer. Our team took the third place.

23 kids will go to the summer camp on the 3th of June. Every child will be able to spend time in the summer camps, even the graduates. Now they have difficult time and everybody has already chosen a place and a tech school they are going to.


	Cultural Info

The kids celebrated International Women`s Day in the beginning of March and there was a competition held for the girls. On the 13 of March a holiday was organized with interesting Russian traditional games. On the Victory Day there was a rally dedicated to the end of Great Patriotic War. It was near the Unknown Soldier`s Tomb. Also, the kids went to the church to celebrate the holiday of Slavonic Alphabet where they ate meals and sang songs.