Some of our club kids come to club individually and meet up with their friends and classmates in the clubroom; but often, our kids arrive to club in mini-gangs as they meet up with their friends on their way to club after school and join each other as they journey to Elim. This past week seemed a little smaller at club due to parent-teacher conferences happening in the afternoons at the elementary school, but the smaller number gave us more time to really connect with individual children! Often when there are so many kids at club, I miss out on spending time with the older girls since they are self-sufficient. It was really great to invest in these young ladies last week - and there was definitely lots of laughter that followed!
Friend Time at Club!
Art time with the little girls! I have so many half-colored pictures in the coloring book because these girls get to chatting and the pictures never get finished... I suppose it is a good problem to have :)
They may have enjoyed trying out the different faces on the chip bags as much as they enjoyed snacking on the chips!
We have started a new theme of focusing on question words in Kid's English Class. We are looking at one question word each week and using the stories and games to practice how we use the word to form questions. The students have studied "what" and "when" the past two weeks. They learned how to create what questions in regards to things ("what is it?") and actions ("what are you doing?"). It was fun to see the kids practicing these questions as they made blind drawings with their partners and tried to guess whose actions were controlling the group in a game of CopyCat. The following week, they learned that "when" refers to time and practiced how to ask "when are you going?" Some of the students brought up that we use the question "what time is it?" to also answer the question of time. We discussed how time in this sentence is an abstract thing and "when" generally refers to a specific event like "when is English Class?". We focused on how we can answer the "when" question with time (4:30pm) or the time of day (in the afternoon), or the day of the week (Monday), or with other words that represent the day (ie: tomorrow). Smart kids always have deep questions; thankfully, I have started preparing to expect these intelligent questions from the kids!
Translators jump in to help when I have an odd number of students - but I think they secretly hope hope they will have a reason to play the games too! In this activity, one partner is drawing a picture with their partner's hand on the pencil. They then ask, "what is it?" and the partner with the blindfold guesses what they have drawn on the paper.
Practicing how to use "when". Students draw a card that is labeled today, tomorrow, yesterday, next week, etc. and then move their pieces around the board accordingly.
My camera roll on my phone is filled with pictures of these Littles! The last two weeks have been some of my favorite themes with this group. We sang a song about a little spider who moves to different parts of the body (knee, hand, head, etc.). The mothers moved their hands on the toddlers like spiders. Soon, the kids got the idea and asked for the "spider" to be on their necks and chins so their mothers would tickle them! The mothers were slightly hesitant to the spider theme at the start, but quickly warmed up to the song and activities as they heard more giggles from their children!
Making a group spider web to move over and under like the spider does and creating paper plate spider webs!
I don't think I have ever met a toddler who wasn't intrigued by dinosaurs. Even little girls are interested in these prehistoric creatures! We marched like different dinosaurs around the room, and the kids smiled as I continued to pull different dinosaur toys out of the box and ask how they think this dinosaur would move. Some of the toddlers had really creative movements for the dinosaurs! It was my biggest group yet at Little Linguists with 10 littles and four baby siblings all together.
Playing with dinosaurs on printed "play-mats" and creating dinosaur fossils and footprints in play-dough! These two activities plus the dinosaur song kept most of the the 10 littles entertained for the entirety of the lesson.
I'm starting to see big strides with the teens in English Class! As an Elementary Teacher, I can easily say that I am addicted to children's books, and the best part about teaching English in a foreign country is that ALL my students can use the picture books to learn English! The teens have been enjoying the picture books as much as the kids in Kid's Class. I have a few books that require the students to interpret the ending for themselves, which is great for English discussion in relation to the story. During one moment while reading a book, one of my students began laughing uncontrollably. She continued laughing while apologizing saying, "Kendra, I'm sorry; I don't mean to interrupt the class. I just thought it was so funny and then when I started laughing, I realized I haven't laughed all day!" If this class can help a 17-year-old finally find joy after a long day school, then I am completely satisfied.
These sisters beamed as they read this interactive picture book... they said it was much more fun than what they have to read in school!
After finishing our theme I called Walk Across America, I decided we could continue studying English in a new theme I am calling Around The World. In the first lesson, we labeled a map with all the places we have travelled around the world and then asked each other questions about the places and the differences in the cultures. The following week, we looked at holidays in different cultures. While the class technically ends at 8pm, we are often still chatting long after the lesson ended. I'm glad they are building close friendships within the class.
Labeling the Map
Our biking gang is growing! We have successfully been adding one person to each trip we have taken so far; we will see if the streak can continue or if we it will remain consistent. On our last trip, we started on a short journey and slowly kept adding to the bike trip by saying "well, (name of village) isn't so far, let's just continue to there." 18 miles and 6 villages later, we finally looped back around back to Letovice.
Enjoying all the gifts from God - good fellowship and beautiful sunshine!
24 hours together with the youth group is my favorite way to spend a weekend. We had wonderful, quality time together as we played games, chatted, went for a hike, dipped our feet in the lake, and sat around the campfire in the evening. The youth pastor had asked me and a two others from our team to organize the games for the weekend, so we chose games that either required group teamwork or individual challenges as we didn't want any division in team games during the weekend. As a result, we noticed we had a lot of fun as a group and built relationships with each other. Before leaving for the weekend, I asked everyone in the group to send me a baby picture of themselves. The students then had to guess who was who from the baby pictures! It was a fun game as people tried to identify each other and many people continued talking about the game later in the evening and into the next day. As I was collecting the baby pictures from everyone, I praised God for raising these babies and how only He knew that someday they would all make up the core of the youth group.
During the evening, the youth pastor gave us each a piece of paper and asked us to write down the names of everyone in the group. Then next to the names, he challenged us to think of a skill or talent we have noticed in each person. By the end of the evening, the activity had become a big encouragement circle with many people referring to each other as brothers and sisters; and the most emotional of all - the youth pastor as a father-figure. We were all touched by this moment together to see how God is using all of our talents for His glory!
Group Picture!
Time Together
Hiking in the Beautiful Countryside
The Youth Group Students love the song "Oceans" by Hillsong and frequently request that we sing it during worship. While at the lake during Weekend Together, one of my friends snapped this picture as we dangled our feet off the dock. We knew it was the perfect picture for lyrics from this favorite song!