Give Kids the World

Give Kids the World is a beautiful resort-type village run primarily by volunteers!  They serve 3 meals a day, ice cream all day, a traveling cookie cart, playground, theater, several play areas...all free to guests and all run by volunteers! Of course, running a ministry based off of volunteer power, I was very curious how their volunteers are recruited.  Many of them have moved to Florida after retirement and that's kind of the base of volunteers, but they also recruit from colleges.  The week we were there, several colleges sent groups of students who were preparing for some service-oriented profession.  Volunteering at GKTW gave them the service hours needed to complete a requirement for graduation.  It's a superb partnership!

We were actually given 2 villas, a duplex with an adjoining door, so it became like one large house with plenty of room for everyone!  I made good use of the jacuzzi tub! :)




















I think the children got on the carousel every day that we were there! :)

The playground was lots of fun!  It's designed like the Candyland game and GKTW does a giant Candyland game every Sunday evening.  We arrived too late on Sunday to participate, but the children had fun on the playground nonetheless.  It was directly across from our villas, so they REALLY got to enjoy it!  I think they preferred playing on it at night in their pajamas!  Certainly something we would never do at home!

The Ice Cream Palace

Give Kids the World really encourages you to allow your children to do things you wouldn't normally do at home...like ice cream for breakfast!  We did that twice while we were there and boy, did they ever enjoy it!















The splash pad and 0 entry pool were so much fun!  We forgot to get our pictures on the giant wave, though!






The Castle of Miracles was a sweet little place where fun things happened.  The children were encouraged to "make" their pillow by pushing a button on the tree and their souvenir pillow popped out!  William was given a star that he put in a box and we watched a fairy come take it.  She delivered it to the Star Tower and the next day we found his star placed in the tower!  The wishing well made a funny sound when you dropped a coin in...all things the children enjoyed.




The Gingerbread House, where all meals are served.













Amberville is a super-fun place with rides and attractions...airplanes and a train to ride, water boats to drive, an electric train room, and several little animals to ride made this a great place to visit!

Every morning GKTW had different characters come in to visit.  Only Thursday morning's characters interested the children, so we headed down to spend time with the characters...  We became known around the Village as "The Thing Family"!  Any idea why?  LOL!

 

Titus: I love his face in this picture!