Today was a relatively calm and quiet day at at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in , Poland. By mid-afternoon most of the kids had left for the day. I think a shuttle bus transported a group of families away in the early afternoon. I heard recently that the German reception point in Hanover recently filled to capacity, so the Polish Red Cross is working on an ad hoc basis to find destinations for the families transiting through the Przemyśl aid center.
Because it was a quiet afternoon, I spent some time sorting jigsaw puzzle pieces. A quiet Ukrainian teenage boy helped me for a while. We didn’t talk much, but I enjoyed the company.
Dear reader, if you are ever inclined to donate picture puzzles to a refugee reception center, please make sure there is only one puzzle in each box. It seems that most of the picture puzzles we have on our shelves here in Przemyśl contain several puzzles in each box. The pictures all follow the same theme, but they are not identical. This means, before you can start working a puzzle, you must sort all the pieces in the box to find just the pieces for the puzzle you want to work. The pieces for each puzzle can be identified by a distinquishing pattern printed on the back of each piece. All the pieces for each puzzle have the same pattern, which is different from the pattern printed on the back of the pieces for the other puzzles in the box. It’s a clever idea, but it’s a “deal-breaker” when you are working with hyperactive kids who don’t understand that the pieces should be sorted before attempting to fit them together. I have mentioned before in this blog roll that the kids seem to like strewing puzzle pieces across the floor. I suppose part of the reason is because they get frustrated when they find it too difficult to work the puzzles, and the main reason the puzzles are so difficult is because each box contains the pieces for three or four separate puzzles all scrambled together, and the kids don’t understand that the pieces should be unscrambled before attempting to work the puzzle.
Well, now because we had a quiet afternoon, I and my teenage Ukrainian fried were able to sort several puzzles and store the pieces in separate plastic boxes. So maybe next time a child wants to work a picture puzzle, we’ll be ready to get started right away!