Compassion Peru

The boys have a soft spot for South America.  In our journey around the world, they have really been looking forward to this stop.  Why?  Ittiel, their friend and sponsored child through Compassion International lives in Peru.

My husband and I began sponsoring our first child when we were engaged.   He was from Guatemala - a country near and dear to my heart since I had spent part of two summers there.  But when he graduated last year, I really wanted to bring the boys into this process.  So I called Compassion and asked if we could sponsor a boy around their age!  And that is how we 'met' Ittiel!  He is a month older than Xander!  The boys have enjoyed writing and drawing pictures for each other.  In his last letter, Ittiel drew a picture of the two of them playing together! 

I've been inspired by Michelle at Blogging from the Boonies as she writes about ways we can make an impact with the children sponsored thru Compassion.  She has all kinds of ideas on things we can send to them, and tips on how to organize our letters from our sponsored children as well as devise a plan on how to pray for them and strategically write to them.  I must confess that we only wrote our last sponsored child maybe 2 or 3 times a year.  Now our goal is to send Ittiel something once a month.  We are putting our notebook together so we can display his letters as well as keep track of what we are writing him about in order to keep from repeating the same things (another problem I've had in the past).

Keegan is drawing a map for Ittiel!

As we wrapped our time exploring South America and Peru specifically, we sat down and drew some more pictures for him and sent him some fun stickers!

These were our two favorite books:

A Playmate for Puna ~ I picked this up at a used curriculum fair this summer.  I love the artwork in vintage children's books!!!  The boys were enamoured with this story of a Peruvian boy and his llama playmate.  It was a cute 'coming of age' story!  It is amazing how much you can pick up and learn from a story.  Narratives can be a powerful learning tool which is why we spend so much of our day reading and re-reading good books!

Patterns in Peru: An Adventure in Patterning ~ We got in a little bit of math with this one.  The boys loved the story line which included looking for a hidden Incan city using pattern clues.  It was interesting to watch them look for patterns around them and pick up on repeating sequences after reading this book a few times!

And since I can't just leave you all with only two book recommendations, here were some others that were good too!

Carolina's Gift: A Story of Peru ~ beautiful picture book!
The Littlest Llama ~ A delightful read about life in Peru from a llama's perspective!
Love and Roast Chicken: A Trickster Tale from the Andes Mountains ~ Cute tail of a trickster Guinea pig.  I guess it's a good thing the boys didn't realize how easy it would be to get one of these creatures for a pet. 
Discovering El Nino : How Fable and Fact Together Help Explain the Weather ~ I had no idea that the whole El Nino weather patterns had their roots in Peru.  I chose this book because we just had an unusually wet "El Nino" winter last year.  Xander found it interesting, but the two younger boys were bored with the detail.