LAGUNA BEACH : While Mothers Learn, the Children Play

Just a week after volunteers began a co-operative day-care effort to supervise children while their mothers learn English, a dozen women chatted in the church courtyard while their youngsters played around them.

Volunteer Christina Buismato recalled one woman who had earlier explained how she had been misunderstood when attempting to speak English to a man while working as a hotel housekeeper. She thought she asked him for a key, but he blew her a kiss instead. “So that was the big discussion today, about key and kiss,” Buismato said.

The goal of the volunteer effort, led by the Laguna Beach Cross Cultural Task Force, is to familiarize the women with the language and the community, while offering free care and activities for their offspring.

The service is open only two hours a day, but volunteers hope to expand the hours for the women who cannot afford standard day-care fees.

“We’re a very rich community, but a certain percentage of our town does not fit that profile,” task force chairman David Peck said. “And we’re trying to help those people.”

Volunteers plan to soon begin taking the women on field trips to places such as the city library, introducing them to community resources.

They hope to eventually become a full-fledged day-care co-operative for children from infancy to 4 years of age, allowing women to take turns baby-sitting and working part time outside the home, Peck said.

On Tuesday, participants seemed content visiting with one another and playing with their youngsters. At one point, the children formed a circle and volunteers urged the mothers into the ring as well.

“We put our right hand in, we put our right hand out,” they sang, as one of the volunteers urged a mom who had thrust her left arm into the circle to switch limbs.

When the exercise wound down, Natividad Argueta, who has lived five years in Laguna Beach but still struggles with the language, said through an interpreter that she values this chance to learn English and to feel more like part of the community.

Argueta, 24, with her 3-year-old daughter at her side, said that she intends to continue living in Laguna Beach. Then she smiled broadly at her own announcement.

The idea for the day care sprang from a door-to-door survey the task force conducted last year, Peck said.

“The responses we got back was that people wanted both ESL classes and co-op day cares,” he said.

The effort, however, is still in the fledgling stage.

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church has offered its facility for a three-month “experiment,” Peck said. To keep the project going, task force members also intend to solicit funds from area churches.

And while they still need volunteers to help provide the services, Peck said the community has responded favorably so far.

“We have several dozen people who have . . . come forward and are very, very interested in this project,” he said. “It’s been a really heartening community response.”