Kidz Safari 2009

This is our 2nd time having this Kidz safari. Last year, we had it on the 24th of May. It was the 1st day of the mid term school holidays.

This year, we had it in the middle of the mid term break. Some of the reasons were - I was away in Penang last week and we thought the youths could help us during the 1st week of their holidays.

I woke up just before sun rise and had breakfast with Rachel. She was sick for the past 2 weeks, but she had committed herself to this event and so, she came.

We reached church just before 8am. There was so much to do. The day before, we placed all the games in the hallway (for the fear of them getting lost or wet during the night :)). Today, we just had to placed each game on individual tables or stalls. The volunteers were told to come at 8.30am to set up their game stalls.

The children came pouring in by 8.30am. They had to register, get a tag, play cards and a bingo card. (Will explain this later).

This is the registration tag I made for all the 120 children who registered for this event.

This is the bingo card. Esther (or Rachel) thought of this idea. Last year, all the kids were eying the MP3 and what they did was to play one game (an easy game), many times in order to get more tokens and later exchanged them with the MP3. This year we wanted the children to play all the games and each stall would stamp on the bingo card to indicate that the child did come and play the game at their stall.

After registering, the kids were given a chance to guess the weight of the cake. Aunt Chris made this cake. Everyone was so awed by her creativity.

Feeding the tiger - Ah... this is an old game... and all the children loved this game because they get to hit the person behind the tiger. Jian happily volunteered to be that person. Later on, whenever Jian took a break, Qing and Justin took turns to get hit by wet sponges. Jian later commented that he felt that his face was flatter than before.

Hungry Roaring Lion - You think this game is easy? I can assure you that it is not. It's because the lion is very short and difficult for us adults to throw the ball into the hole. Mark, the stall keeper for that game did a marvelous job. The sun was shinning brightly and humidity was high. There was a tent shading the area, but it was still hot. He didn't grumble about the heat, but made a joke out of it. His assistant left him to help out with the next stall - feeding the tiger.

A necktie for Mr Giraffee - Another game from last year's kidz safari. We used a gas tube to form the hoop. The kids had 4 tries for this game.

Dumbo Needs a Tail - A week ago Rachel and I went to the cabin searching for this game. It was painted on 3 plywoods and took us a day to complete the painting. This is the 2nd time we painted this picture, the first time was during Mae-Z's safari party in 2005. Not wanting to spend more time on this game, Rachel went searching for the painted plywoods. What a relieved to her when she found them quite intact and in good condition. We moved them into the next cabin so that it would be easier to take them out later.

Munchy Monkey - This game uses the same board as "Dumbo Needs a Tail" game. The child's job was to feed the monkey by using a long stick with a banana attached at the end of the stick, and hook the banana onto another hook on the board. To make it more interesting, we gave a time limit to the kids so that they wouldn't take forever to feed the monkey.

High Voltage Area -This game is so old, but the children loved it. At any one time, there were children playing this game.

Watershed - A simple game, but not that easy. By using a stick and a ring attached to to the string, the child had to hook the bottle with the ring. Again, we set a time limit to this game.

Dunk the Animals - This game is probably one of the easiest way to collect tokens. The child was given 3 balls to overthrow the toy animals out of their comfort zone.

Safari Droppings - All these fancy names were thought of, last year. The child was given ping pong (table tennis) balls to throw into the egg trays. I remembered painting this last year, and at that time I thought it would be fun if each colour represented different amount of tokens given.

Tin Cans - This year, JoelC was in charged ( I just assumed that he was in charged because I saw him here most of the time) or maybe he was just helping out. The tin cans were not stacked high like the twin towers. This made it harder to knock all the tins down.

Crocodile Alert - A game that was so popular with the kids last year because Uncle Rajen was in charged then. Looks like this game was one of the children's favourites too because there were lots of them wanting to have a go at the crocodiles.

Some of last year's games like Leopard Spot, Win Lose or Draw and Guess Who Came to the Party were omitted from this year's safari games. Aunt Chris didn't want the kids to feel bored so she replaced some games with new ones.

The following games are all new and I asked Sze-En which were the games she loved most. She said the leap frog and spider web were her favourites.

Ring Toss Game - Initially we had only 1 cone, but I guessed Aunt Chris thought it would be better to have more cones by adding some bottled water. This is an easy game unlike the next one.

Coin Throw Game - Everyone found it hard to collect tokens from this game. At first we used key rings but found that it bounced to easily off the plates. I went into the resource room to search for other types of rings and found some washers. It was still difficult to get tokens but definitely much easier than the rings. Later someone pitied the children and added more plates.

Hit It In - Rajen was in charged of this game. Naturally there was a long queue.... definitely not because this was an easy game or they wanted to support Uncle Rajen's game stall. Just before each child played the game, Rajen would want to know their names and age first and then teach them how to hold the table tennis racket. He allowed them to have a trial run before the actual game. When someone actually got the ping pong ball in, he congratulated him/her by shaking their hand, giving them a token and said "nice doing business with you".

Darts - Very difficult to get bull's eye. This is a toy game and the darts are too light to even hit anywhere near the centre of the board.

Leap Frog - The children loved this game. They just need to throw the frog onto the leaf and they get a token for it.

Spider's Web - According to Sze-En, this game is very easy. The children got to choose 4 insects out of 5. They would then throw through the web and to get a token, the insect must fall into any of the 3 baskets beyond the web.

Tarzan Swing - It wasn't what Aunt Chris wanted but she "okayed" it due to lack of time. She wanted a rope with knots to be hung at the top of the tree so that the children could climb up. What the man (person who did this wasn't from our church) did was to tie 2 parallel ropes, one for the children to hold on to, and the other for the children to walk across crab-like to the other end of the rope.

Most children found this exciting and easy. Danny who was in charged of this game said that this game was well-liked by the children judging from the long queue of children lining up.

Ah... I can't remember what Aunt Chris called this game. Was it balloons tail or something like that? Anyway, this is exactly like the musical chairs we played when we were young. No tokens for this game, but the winner will get a toy made from a long balloon.

At 10.45am, all the children went in for a Mini-me and puppet show. Mini-me was cooked up by Azriel and Arthur during the Aspirer's Anniversary last year. Noticed that Mini-me's hands are not the same colour as it's face. Arthur was behind expressing with his hands while Azriel was telling a story. It was so hilarious. Let's see if I can upload a movie clip on this.

Ah.. the winner of "guess the weight of the cake". There were 6 winners but we picked only one so that we didn't have to cut the cake into 6 like what we did last year. Rajen presented the cake to Jordan, the winner.

Okay, let me explain to you how the safari games system works. Each child aged between 6 and 12 must register 2 weeks before the event and pay RM2 (EURO 0.40, or USD 0.60) for the registration fees. This RM2 covers their snacks and water.

On the event day, each child will be given a wrist tag, about 20-25 playcards and a bingo card. On the tag we have the child's name and age and their guardian's contact number. For every game the child wanted to play, they have to give one playcard to the person in charged of the game. When they win, they are given tokens (in coin form) to exchange for gifts later.

There are 18 games, 1 musical chair game and a puppet show and each child must complete play/attend all the stalls in order to complete the bingo card. The person in charged of the stall will have to stamp onto the bingo card (only once for each card) to indicated that the child has visited the stall.
Upon completion of the card, the child will proceed to the gifts counter where she or he will get a free gift for completing the bingo card.

The more you play, the more tokens you will accumulate and you will be able to get your favourite gifts. After 12pm, I told some of the games keeper that to make it easy for the kids to get the tokens. Some children found it difficult to collect the necessary amount of tokens for their favourite toys. Some who wanted a certain toy so much that they played not for fun but to get more tokens.

In order to get more playcards, the children are encouraged to memorized verses and repeat them to Aunt Yeow and Aunt Pik Mei. Some smarter ones arranged the books of the bible in the form of cardboard strips because they have memorized them even before this event.

The food committee prepared sandwiches and buns for the kids.

Judy "worked" so hard to get this MP3. It was "priced" at 200 tokens.

The overall pictures of the event. This year we set up 5 tents. Last year, we only had 3 tents.

At 1pm, many of us started clearing up the area. It's true that many hands makes work light. By 2.45pm everything was cleared except for the tents.

Oh, this is JoelC and his neckties. He was just fooling around with the balloons.

All in all, it was a successful event. The kids had their fun. The organisers were glad that the kids enjoyed themselves. It seems someone told my sister that her 6year-old child waited for 1 whole year to attend this event. The child was 5 years old last year. He not only couldn't play any games then but had to watch his older brother having fun. Over the past 1 year, he reminded his mother over and over again not to miss this year's Kidz Safari.

Will we have this event again?
I don't think so. Too much work and too little human resources. :(

Managed to upload a short video clip on Mini-Me.