Thursday, February 29, 2024

February 2024

 Winter Retreat


To kick off February, we had our annual Winter Retreat!  It was decided to have a smaller group this year so that we could really invest in the youth students who spend time with us regularly during the year plus a couple former youth students who still attend and help us on the retreat.  We were all very happy to have such a tight-nit group and could easily gather everyone together, play our regular Live Action Mafia, and have good discussions. 


While in Minnesota I grew up with Winter Retreats that included sledding and broomball competitions, in Czech we take our youth students to the mountains for downhill skiing and snowboarding.  I always love skiing down the slopes trailing after the youth and watching them have lots of fun!  For convenience, we often start by splitting up into smaller groups, but this year, many of us ended up finding each other on the slopes until we were nearly all together again.  While the weather was a little wet and foggy, we enjoyed the time.  A group of us also went ice skating one afternoon while the rest of the group enjoyed the afternoon resting at the cabin.  We were all pretty tired after the weekend filled with activities (and many of us ended up catching colds), but the time together was irreplaceable. 




Our theme for this year's Winter Retreat was based on Philippians 2:15, where the Apostle Paul encourages Christians to Shine as the Stars in a broken world.  We spent the three evenings talking through what it means to be a Christian and how we stand out in a broken world; how our salvation in Christ is like flickering stars as we approach it in awe (as Paul describes it in "fear and trembling" two verses earlier).  On the final evening, we divided into small groups to discuss how we can stand out in this depraved generation, and one of our youth students said he was ready to make that commitment and stand out in faith!  He had been thinking about God for some time and realized there was no reason to wait any longer!  Another "shining star" was added in the heavens that evening, and I am confident it was accompanied by an angelic chorus.
 

Watch a video of Winter Retreat HERE!

English Class - Level 1

These kids have been continuing in their theme about the City!  We have been learning many new vocabulary words in English including places in the city and occupations.  Recently, the students have been trying to translate our books more and are really getting good at recognizing and translating phrases that have been repeated multiple times.  I am always so proud of them! 

 

These kids have such great smiles and joyful personalities.  I love the energy they bring to the class!  We learned in one of our recent lessons that our repeating parrot, Opakovacka, likes to be quite silly and tease our translator.  The kids and the translator were all in fits of giggles and it makes learning English so much fun when there is an unruly, repeating parrot who seems to be running the class.  

 
English Class - Level 2


The older kids have been continuing in their theme of the Five Senses.  We have finished Sight and Sound as we spend two weeks on each of the five senses to really grasp the vocabulary around it and learn how ti use it in English conversations.  As we have been practicing Sound, we considered the terms "loud, quiet, noisy, squeaky, and rhythmic" to describe how something sounds.  The kids this age adore animals, and I keep coming back to animals (because we can use animals to practice so many things!).  The students have been using these terms to describe how animals sound.  A lion is loud; a mouse is squeaky; a songbird is rhythmic.  We also learned we don't know how all animals sound and the curiosity of students this age became a question on repeat!  The next lesson, we asked the students to please choose animals they know how they sound to try to bring all the questions to a minimum, but I love their curiosity.


In the next lesson on Sound, we continued using the same vocabulary words to describe the sounds inside homemade maracas.  The students tried to match their noise with someone else in the class, use one of the new words to describe how it sounds, and then guess what is inside the maracas.  We also learned new vocabulary for animal sounds - bark, hiss, meow, roar, growl, thud, tweet, and buzz.  As always, we are continuing our writing challenge as the students are creating a story using the new terms we learn.


Homeschool English Class


Homeschool group is working on the basics of English Phonetics.  We have already practiced short vowel sounds and then I introduced TH, SH, CH, and WH blending sounds.  We also practiced Sneaky Silent E.  I had noticed that some of the students were having a more difficult time sounding out new words in English, so I decided it was best to teach the basics of English Phonetics so that they would feel more confident reading longer texts and larger words.  I typically teach vocabulary and conversations through a variety of games since the kids typically get lots recitation practice in school; however, since this group is homeschooled, I didn't want them to fall behind their peers.  So, we still play lots of games, learn lots of new vocabulary, and talk while we learn phonics and sentence structures.

Making Sneaky Silent E masks with lost of silent E words!

Catching Fish with blended sounds 

Little Linguists


Due to Spring Break and a week that I had to miss (plus the fact that February is a shorter month), we only had two Little Linguist classes this month!  The toddlers loved our lesson on hearts (pun intended...)!  Our song was about lots of different hearts and different colors and how we share our hearts with others.  The Littles would then trade hearts with each other. Our Dramatic Play center was set up as a Cafe and the toddlers had a wonderful time making heart-shaped cookies and serving their moms lots of imaginary coffee.  One of the toddlers brought me many cups of coffee during playtime until finally she just brought me the coffee pitcher... I guess she was tired of bringing me so many cups!


This week, our theme was "At the Farm!"  There were 12 toddlers in the room, and it really felt like a farm with everything going on and all the noise.  It was so fun to see them engaging in lots of different activities, creating their games, and playing with new friends.  We made farm pictures, did lots of animal puzzles, and made barns for toy animals.  After finishing with our "goodbye" song, one of the Littles didn't want to leave, so she sat on my lap so I couldn't leave either!  I'm convinced there is nothing sweeter than toddler hugs! 


One of the reasons I enjoy Little Linguists is the chance to get to talk with parents about their children and encourage them in ways to expand their child's learning at this very impressionable age.  Having a background in Early Childhood Education, I often look for and point out the achievements in communication, play, and social development.  As I acknowledge these aspects and create an environment that promotes learning and cooperation, it's my desire the parents will feel encouraged and supported.

Kid's Club



Some of my favorite times at Kid's Club is when kids come back to check-in!  These two were some of the first kids who started coming to our Boskovice Youth Center seven years ago.  They were just little kids coming on their scooters back then, and now they are high school students!  Many high schoolers in Czech attend schools in different cities and it makes it difficult for them to come to youth clubs because of the increased homework and bus schedules.  It is always really fun for us to reconnect with these students when they have the chance to visit us again. 


The kids in our youth club in Letovice like coming back to the familiar games and leaders each week.  I can always count on some card and board games with this group of kids as well as some foosball.  There is also a group of kids who come on their scooters and are enjoying the open event hall to ride around inside on our mini-ramps while the weather outside is still a bit cold and dreary.  I enjoy watching them encourage each other on their new scooter skills and record the jumps for each other.  Mostly, I love that our youth center provides a place for these kids to connect with each other.

Youth Group


After returning from a great, long weekend at Winter Retreat, we continued in out theme about Shining as the Stars and talked about how stars and mountains remain constant like God.  (Since we had been talking about stars while in the mountains the weekend before, we could all relate to this.)  However, fog comes and suddenly we cant see the stars or mountains, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.  The fog is like our emotions; sometimes it clouds our ability to see God, and we have disillusionment of the characteristics of God because our emotions affect how we see Him.  The students all understood this as they had gone back to school and regular life and realized the fog started coming and clouding their ability to see God.  We talked about the importance of meeting together as a group to encourage each other and remind each other that God, like the mountains and stars, remains constant even when our emotions and the fog comes. 


To remind ourselves of this, I had the youth write on one side of a notecard all the emotions they felt in the week.  On the other side, they wrote "But God" to remind them that God is greater than all the emotions they felt during the week.  I encouraged the students to cary the notecard with them during the next week as a reminder.

Outreach


Our biggest event of the year is a summer day-camp called LetFest!  We opened registration this week, and within a day our Sports Classes have hit capacity and there are limited spaces left in English Classes.  I am in awe of how God continues to move through this ministry and the excitement students have by returning again and again each year.  We are beginning meetings as a team and our American Friends are also underway in planning.  Everyone has been looking forward to LetFest 2024 since we ended LetFest last summer, so it is exciting to be in that planning phase!

American "Auntie" Time


There's always something special about "American Time" and spending a week with these three little girls made my heart flow with joy!  While their parents headed off to a conference, we spent their spring break in what seemed like a personalized kid's camp!  We spent so much time outside (puddle jumping mostly since there was lots of rain!) and the rest of each day was filled with reading stories, making a puppet theatre, lots of art projects, singing, hair braiding, dancing & instruments, playing board & card games, and creating our own stories and song rhymes.  On one particularly rainy day, one of the girls suggested we watch a movie, and I said, "I just don't know when we will fit it in!  We wanted to play a board game and do another art project and bake a treat still!"  The movie idea was quickly forgotten as they looked forward to lots of other special activities, and we made many lasting memories. 

"Wouldn't it be great if instead of lots of puddles, it was just one big puddle that covered everything?!"
"Ummm... we call that a flood."
"... but you could jump in it, and it would be fun."

Imagination Play at the park was one of our favorite things!  We all had different roles and imagined we were on a boat in the ocean.
Lookout: "Oh no! Pirates! And Sharks!"
Captain: "Big waves! Monsters!"
Me: "It's chaos! What will we do?"
Fisherman: (starts pulling in fish faster)

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

January 2024

English Class - Level 1

Jumping back into lessons with these kids could never be easier.  We all enjoyed our long break as I was on Home Assignment stateside, but the students were ready to get back into the swing of lessons again - and share all about how many teeth they had lost in the seven weeks I was gone!  I have to remember not to have too many vocabulary words with a "th" sound in this class... 


We started our new theme about the City and are learning lots of new vocabulary about things we will find around our city!  The kids have had fun learning different types of transportation (car, train, motorcycle, bus) and some places we can find transportation (bus stop, station, airport, etc.).  We also began learning some places we can visit in the city like a church, school, library, or store.  Our parrot puppet, Opakovacka, is helping us learn the new vocabulary words, but she got in trouble with some of the kids for being a copycat (apparently there is a difference between being a copycat and repeating... 6-year-olds can explain that better than I can).  These students are so talented, but the best part of teaching is watching them all get fits of giggles at the same time!

One of my favorite parts of teaching is watching young translators develop leadership skills.  The kids become attached to the translators and it encourages them both in so many ways - for the translator to know they are appreciated and helping, and for the kids to have a role model to strive for as they themselves grow in English language and leadership. 



English Class - Level 2

These kids were ecstatic to receive letters back from their American PenPals to start off the new semester!  In one of the classes, as I excitedly told the kids our American Friends wrote back to us, the classroom was in an uproar of cheers and giggles.  Then, one of my practical students said, "You know... I was expecting a letter back.  I mean, we have been working on those letters for 10 weeks!  I guess I just expected they would respond."  

I was so happy to have deliver these letters to the students, and they excitedly wrote back short Thank You postcards to their PenPals.  One of the students came to me as she was writing the thank you saying, "I made a mistake!  Do you think my American Friend will still understand it?"  Knowing that this American Friend had also noticed  a minor mistake in their own letter, I pointed out the mistake in the American Friend's letter and said, "Look.  Even your American Friend makes mistakes.  We all make mistakes, but that shouldn't stop us from trying to communicate, right?  Does it bother you that your American Friend made a mistake?"  My student waved her hand and said, "Oh, of course I don't mind!"  After that, she dived full-on into her letter and didn't worry about making mistakes, and that is exactly what I hope all the students learn in this class!  


We started a new theme in the Level 2 classes about our Five Senses!  We will spend two weeks on each of the five senses to really get a grasp of how to use our senses to describe the things around us in English.  Starting off with the sense "sight," we learned how to place shapes, colors, and size in order when describing an item.  The kids picked up on this concept quickly as they put it into practice with stations around the room.  We also guessed what shapes we had on our heads and had a coloring activity that challenged the students to color their picture with specific instructions.  Since the students love writing to their American Friends, we have also started another writing assignment to practice our new understanding of the Five Senses and get our American Friends involved! 


We learned how to make adjectives using "-est" at the end of the words.  We sorted through our class from tallest to shortest, oldest to youngest, and darkest hair to lightest hair.  As the kids in this class were all comparing hair color and having a hard time deciding whose hair really was the darkest, my newest student came and grabbed my hand from where I sat in front of them saying, "Ms. Teacher, you have the darkest hair.  Come with me."  He led me to the head of the line and was very proud of himself.  I am always so encouraged when the new students easily feel so natural in English Class.  However, I was a bit surprised no one had thought to pull me into the line for "oldest," and while I notice a few strands of hair beginning to lighten with age, it was so encouraging to have this child put me at the head of the line for "darkest hair." 


After taking this picture, I said, "Oh, that turned out great!"  My "aspiring lawyer" just casually said, "Can I see the picture?" 
"Thanks. Oh, Kendra, I can guess my shape now."

Homeschool English Class

The homeschool group has begun learning basic phonics of English as we are working on sounding out and recognizing similarities in words.  We practiced short vowel sounds and made as many words as we can as a class by changing just one letter in our line at a time.  It was a fun challenge, and the kids had a lot of fun trying to recall more vocabulary words to keep their streak going.  Last Friday, we practiced adding on the "sh, ch, and th" sound to our words.  This made it a little more difficult to make the running streak, but then we started thinking about not only using the blended sound at the start of the word, but also at the end or in the middle!  The students were encouraged to begin really understanding the consistencies in these vocabulary words.  


One of their new favorite games is Slap.  There is a stack of produce cards, and as they take turns flipping over the produce cards, they say the name of the produce in English.  When there is a bug card that is turned over, they all try to slap the stack to get the stack of cards.  The person who has all the cards at the end of the game, wins.  However, even students who have lost all their card can slap back into the game!  I have already noticed after just a couple games that all the repetition is really helping because they are saying the names of the produce faster each time! 


Little Linguists

These toddlers have been having lots of fun in Little Linguists over the past few weeks!  We learned about hibernating animals and hid inside "caves", looked for sleeping animals with flashlights, and colored our own caves with animals hidden inside.  I adore the moments when the kids grab my hand to show me something they are working on or to play with them.  There is one toddler who continually brings me a cup of "coffee" from the play kitchen (it is like he just knows) and another who will jump into my lap and wrap her arms around me a dozen times a lesson.  Some of the toddlers have gotten used to waving and blowing kisses through the window as they are leaving, and my heart is simply filled with their little smiles.  Connecting with these moms and being an encouragement for them is one of my favorite parts of teaching this group - to be able to give these moms a little break and some new material for games, songs, and age-appropriate art activities.



These toddlers also learned about all things with wheels in one of our favorites - The Wheels on the Bus. We change out "bus" with all other vehicles so the song can take as long or as short as holds the interest of the students.  To finish up January, we ended with a theme about Snow!  The toddlers enjoyed making their own "snow-globes", parachuting snow (flattened white coffee filters) into the air, and they especially enjoyed making faces on the snowmen! 

 

Kid's Club

One of the things I love about Kid's Club is that every week is different, and you never know what will be in the job description for that day.  It could be teaching a fun new game, playing the same game for the millionth time, chatting with parents over coffee while the kids play, or rescuing shoes that had been tossed on top of the rock-climbing-wall.  That pretty much sums up January with these kids!  Though the shoe rescue story was a little more crazy than simply climbing to the top of the rock-climbing-wall, but at least we were practicing our problem solving skills and team-building!


Youth Group

There has been a core group of youth students attending youth group on Friday night.  We are happy for these regular students who want to grow together and spend time learning about God with us.  I recently taught about the wise and foolish men who built their homes on the rock and sand in the parable that Jesus shares.  We talked about how in both situations the storm came.  The only difference was the foundation of the house.  Further, we discussed the story of Shadrack, Meshack, and Abendigo in the Firey Furnace and how God didn't stop the boys from being thrown into the furnace, but stood in the fire with them.  God never promises that the storms and fires won't come, but by believing in Him and putting our foundation in Him, He promises we won't go through the storms alone.

Youth Pastor's son helping with the demonstration of the foundation in the storm.

BINGO is one of our favorite games!

Outreach

This section of "Outreach" is fun for me to write because it wasn't an outreach I was leading, but got to participate in!  For the last ten years, the Catholic Church has been putting on a ball for the city.  The youth arrange much of the dance - organizing the food, games, prizes, and a training months in advance to showcase special dances.  We love connecting with the Catholic Church for many outreach events, and I have so many faithful friends who are attenders at the church.  It has been so fun for me to see especially the youth grow into leadership roles as I have known many of the youth students as they were little students in some of my first English Classes!  I love seeing how they have grown in faith and community.

One of my girls, "Kendra! This sign is perfect for you!"
Another one of my girls, "We all need 'I Love Jesus' signs!" 

My favorite Czech Holiday is Three Kings Day.  On this January holiday, children in groups of three go around the city knocking on doors and singing a carol about how they are the three kings who have traveled from afar in search for the baby King.  They collect change for charity (like Salvation Army coming to your door) and then write a blessing on the doorframe.  My friend said the girls in her group were excited when they learned their route for the morning collection saying, "We can go to Kendra's house!"  It was the morning after I had arrived back to Czech from my stateside trip, so I was jet-lagged and my suitcase was still lost in Amsterdam, but seeing these sweet girls on my deck the first morning I was back brought me so much joy!  This tradition is so encouraging to celebrate seeking the King, and I pray it touches the hearts of people in this city to consider their own search for the King.