Impressions of Past Vacation Program Weeks

2022

Impressions From the Vacation Program Weeks Held in 2022

2020

Break	Theme for the Week
Easter O1	Discovering Diversity Together
Easter O2	Creative With All Your Senses
Summer S1	Active Together
Summer S2	Sports, Circus, and Performance
Summer S3	Creative Week (instead of RWTH Anniversary Week)
Fall H1	The World of Machines
Fall H2	Looking for Nature

Vacation Program Weeks Continue in the Time of Coronavirus

Despite coronavirus, the RWTH Family Services Center was able to hold its vacation breaks at Humboldt House during three weeks in the summer break and during the fall break in 2020. Due to restrictions related to the coronavirus, the participants were divided into fixed reference groups of up to 15 children, each led by three supervisors.

During the sports-themed week, the children had a lot of fun with movement and games: they went bouldering, played ultimate frisbee and miniature golf in the park, danced together, and competed against each other in various disciplines at the Sports Olympics.

The second week took place in cooperation with the school circus Configurani. All 40 participating children were able to try out up to 13 different disciplines in small groups. These included, for example, aerial silk, trapeze, tightrope, juggling, unicycle, diabolo, and (partner) acrobatics. The week was topped off with a circus performance, where the children were able to show off their rehearsed acts to a limited group of parents.

Since the RWTH anniversary celebrations were mostly canceled due to coronavirus restrictions, the Anniversary Week planned in cooperation with Centre Charlemagne was replaced by a creative week full of handicraft, pasting, painting, and crafting. The highlight of the week was a trip to the Naturkinder garden workshop, where each child carved a gnome, knife, or animal out of wood.

During the first week of the fall break, which took the theme of machines, the children visited the Telecommunications Museum and various technical institutes of RWTH. In addition to the exciting guided tours at the Space Team and Team Sonnenwagen, the children built robots. The participants could experiment and learn something about glass painting and painted their own glass pictures.

The next week focused on the topic of nature. After an introduction to sustainability, the children collected trash. Another exciting part of the program was the scavenger hunt through the forest, where children not only had to find the right way, but also solve some tricky tasks. The participants became nature explorers and learned a lot about beavers and their habitat at Schloss Rahe, coaxed earthworms out of the ground with the help of metal cans at Willi Wurm, and explored the Aachen Zoo. They made beeswax cloths and seed balls and made wallets out of beverage cartons.

In between, they played a lot of games, such as werewolf, zombies, Uno, cops and robbers, and soccer, and made some new friends along the way.