This post has been long overdue. The Christmas season is over and yet I am only posting about this now. Sheesh! Bear with me as life in our house has been quite hectic the past two months. I haven’t even been able to blog as much. My last post was a week ago! Gosh.
Anyway, some time before Christmas, I was part of the Keeping Christ in Christmas Blog Carnival. In my entry entitled “How to Remind Your Kids About Jesus Christ This Christmas”, I wrote about how I listed a few of my ideas on how to do such. One of my suggestions was to take the kids to the Ateneo Christmas Park.
Before that time, I’ve never heard that the Ateneo did something like that. They organized a contest for their community to create belens (the Nativity scene) that are representative of the different regions in the country. I thought it would be a great way to remind the kids the true reason why we are celebrating Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, of course. At the same time, it would be a good way to remind them of their Philippine geography lessons.
So, off we went to the Ateneo on the night of December 22. We were unable to see all of the belens since some were not located near each other and it was hard to walk around with a toddler in tow. However, we really liked what we saw. I was so pleased to find out that the belens were made with recycled materials. Awesome! My girls got great ideas on recycling too.
Here are some of the photos we took.
The first one we saw was the one nearest the parking lot, which was Region V – Bicol. I love that they used plastic bottle caps to create the Nativity scene.
The next one we saw was the one for NCR (National Capital Region).
I love this MRT model they made. So cool! Ziggy, of course, loved it too and wanted to play with it!
What I liked most about it, though, was the Baby Jesus, made of mostly scrap computer parts. Awesome!
We also saw the one for Region III – Central Luzon. The Nativity Scene was made of cloth and used sacks.
I like this Christmas tree from Region IV-A – Calabarzon.
The version of Region IV-B Mimaropa was also really nice.
I love this banca made of bamboo and used tarpaulin.
These are nice flower designs made out of used plastic bottles.
The one we saw last was the one from the ARMM region. They used the vinta to represent the Nativity.
Wish you guys were able to see the park too. It was really cool. My girls were inspired to actually create stuff made of recycled materials, which was exactly what they did during Christmas vacation. We’re looking forward to visiting the park again next year.
