Volunteering at the High Atlas Foundation offers many different opportunities, but my favorite part is definitely interacting and spending time with people, especially children. So when my colleague Aziza and I were given the opportunity to plan and spend a day with children in a rural partner community in Morocco, I was very excited.

We were supposed to prepare a variety of activities to give the children a fun and memorable day. However, we already faced some challenges during the planning process. We didn’t know how old the children were, what the rooms looked like, or how much time we would have with them. So how could we prepare for a good day when we didn’t know what to expect? Nevertheless, we tried our best to put together a program of creative and playful activities. We were really looking forward to meeting the children and spending time with them.

On October 6, we drove to Sidi Rahal, a small village about an hour away from Marrakech. As we drove through the village, we passed very few and mainly tiny houses along the main road, until we stopped in front of an unremarkable house. From the outside, I would never have guessed that this was a place where children spent their time. There were no bright colors, no outdoor play area, and hardly any indication that the building was intended for young children. 

The door was open and led us into a small hallway. Straight ahead was the room where the children spent their time. To the right, there was another room with a few tables, which was used for other purposes and also as a storage room. A corridor led to a bathroom with a sink and a toilet. 

Then it was finally time for us to meet everybody. When we entered their classroom, Aziza and I both were kind of nervous. We expected a rather quiet and perhaps shy reaction from the kids. After all, we were strangers to them, and I even come from another country and speak a completely different language. But instead, in the first few moments in the room, we experienced a welcome that I have never felt before. Many of the children immediately ran towards us and hugged and kissed us. They seemed incredibly happy about our visit. Their openness and warmth really surprised me.                                                          

At the same time, the situation was quite chaotic. The children were laughing and talking all at once. As lovely as their excitement was, I felt a little overwhelmed at first. It was difficult for us to get their attention and bring some calm into the room. Only when the teacher raised her voice did the children became more quiet. 

Within the first few minutes, I realized that our prepared plan probably wouldn’t work. The children were only between three and five years old, and the room was very different from what I had imagined, based on my previous experiences. The room reminded me more of a traditional classroom than a kindergarten. There were many tables and chairs arranged along the walls. At the front, there was a whiteboard, and posters with letters and numbers were hanging on the walls. What particularly caught my attention was the lack of toys, play materials, and enough space for the children to move around freely.

From my own experience, I associate a kindergarten with different play areas, creative materials, and opportunities for movement, inside as well as outside. Of course, this doesn’t mean that every kindergarten has to look exactly the same. Still, I wondered how children at this age could express their curiosity, creativity, and need for movement in a room like this.

After talking to the teacher, it became clear that many of our planned activities were not possible because of the limited space. She therefore suggested doing finger painting with the children. For the first activity, the children came to the teacher’s desk one by one. There, they received a piece of paper with their name on it and could then create fingerprints together with Aziza and me. The children seemed to enjoy the activity.

However, looking back, I would organize it differently. Since only one or two children could participate at the same time, the others had to wait for quite a long time. For children between the ages of three and five, it is difficult to sit still for a long period without having anything to do. As a result, the room became increasingly loud and turbulent. Instead of having the children simply wait for their turn, we could have organized another activity to keep them engaged in the meantime. This made me realize that the children’s behavior wasn’t necessarily the problem. They were eager to try something new, but the way we had organized the activity wasn’t well enough adapted to their age and needs.

Afterwards, we tried one of the activities from our original plan: making paper airplanes. At first, I was skeptical about whether the children might still be too young for this. It turned out that it works better than expected. While one of us showed the folding process step by step, the others helped the children fold their paper. Once the paper airplanes were finished, the children were allowed to try them out. Unfortunately, this was only possible inside the room. There was no suitable playground outside, only a street where the activity wouldn’t have worked and would also have been too dangerous.

So once again, the classroom became quite chaotic. But to be honest, this was my highlight of the day. I had the impression that the children had probably never done an airplane like this before, and they were so incredibly excited that their happiness made me smile as well. They tried to chase their own plane as fast as they could and ran around wherever they could. What I loved most was that they could take their paper airplanes home with them as a little reminder of this special moment. 

At around 1 p.m., the children were already picked up by their parents. I was surprised because I had assumed that we would spend the entire day with them.  The goodbye was also very different from what I had expected. While the welcome had been incredibly warm and enthusiastic, the children only said a quick goodbye before running to their parents. Maybe they didn’t even realize that we wouldn’t be coming back the next day.

One thing that stayed on my mind was that we hadn’t had a shared snack, meal, or rest break during our time together. Especially for children this young, I believe such breaks can be important for recharging their energy and helping them to concentrate again. I also remember those breaks being some of my favorite moments as a child. However, I didn’t know what their usual daily routine looked like, whether they had breakfast at home, or whether they ate after being picked up. 

I also kept thinking about the environment in which the children spent their time. Young children don’t learn only through guided activities, but also, and perhaps especially, through playing, exploring, moving, and trying things out independently. To do so, they need an environment that gives them opportunities to develop these skills. Looking at the room and its limited possibilities, I wondered how these needs could be better supported. Perhaps even small changes, such as providing simple toys and more creative materials or reorganizing the room to create more space for movement, could already make a difference.

What stood out the most, however, was the children's bright smiles all day long. Their excitement over something as simple as a paper airplane reminded me that meaningful moments don’t always require elaborate activities or expensive materials.                                                     

This experience also taught me something about my own approach. I realized how important it is to stay flexible and adapt activities to the children’s ages, needs, and surroundings instead of just trying to follow a prepared plan. In the end, the day was very different from what I had imagined. It wasn’t perfectly organized, and not everything worked as planned. Still it gave me the opportunity to learn, reflect, and share moments of genuine happiness with the children.