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Autumn is such a magical season through the eyes of a toddler! The leaves change to be brightly colored golden, orange, or red and then they gracefully float to cover the ground - creating a satisfying CRUNCH when walking on the sidewalks. This lesson with the Littles focused on this idea of the leaves changing color and falling to the ground. We enjoyed creating our own trees with falling leaves from paper bags and torn paper, coloring and gluing tissue paper on paper trees, and flinging cutouts of leaves into the air on a scarf! The activities kept most of the Littles busy for the entire hour and half together!
Kendra: "Tear up the paper to make leaves for the tree."
"Now blow on the tree like the wind so the leaves fall!"
Little: *grabs tree and shakes all the leaves off*
Kendra to Mother: "it was maybe a more stormy season... but he's got the right idea!"
Autumn Tree Art
Parachuting Leaves
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The Spider Theme is one of my favorite lessons with the Littles. We sing a song about a ticklish spider and then make spiderwebs and googly-eyed, pipe-cleaner spiders. Arachnophobia is impossible with these fuzzy, eight-legged projects - even the moms love making these whimsical spiders! For the lesson, I laid out white scarves to create a spiderweb for the Littles to walk on. My idea was for the Littles to pretend being spiders and practice balancing and following a path. After a few minutes, one Little came to me with a new idea. She said, "walk with me!", so I followed her around the spiderweb for a little ways when suddenly she turned around and declared, "now I am the spider and you are the fly!" These clever toddlers are always surprising me! We played her new game multiple times that morning.
Spider Craft
Walking on the Spiderweb
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These two Kid's English Classes seem to be on an accelerated learning track! Many of the students have been in my class before (some of them for the third year now!), so we can continue to build on what they learned before. It also keeps me on my toes as I continue to come up with new activities and games. They are enjoying rereading the Elephant and Piggie books, and we created backdrops for our theatre props so the students could recreate the story with how they imagine the background (something the author/illustrator, Mo Willems, leaves out of the books).
Backgrounds for Elephant and Piggie Puppets
Practicing Nouns
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It seems that each week, we have someone new in Adult English Class, but the class quickly invites them into the group and welcomes the new student into the class. We are moving through a theme about the 470 Hopkins Home in Minnesota. There were over 50 families who have lived in the home in the last 100 years, so we are looking at 7 of the families who lived in this home and discussing the culture and American history through English conversation and games.
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Our new building is so comfortable, it feels like we have been there longer than just one month! Everyone is enjoying the different rooms and how it allows many different activities to occur at the same time. Many of the kids enjoy some crafts or table games upstairs in the Cafe or playing group games or ping-pong in the Main Room. This upstairs room is all connected, but the angle of the room provides a sense of separate areas while sill making it possible for the leaders to connect with the kids in both rooms at the same time! 
Scratch Art
Crafting and Table Games
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The two rooms downstairs are connected by a doorway, but often there are very different activities happening in these two rooms. One room is set up as a "Workout Room" and many kids spend time in this room training new workout skills. The adjoining room has the foosball table and a television for the kids to play Just Dance. Even though both rooms are very different in the style of activities, many of the club kids jump back and forth trying out the activities in both rooms!
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During this season, many school invite me to come give special lectures about American Holidays. The teachers want their students to hear a native English speaker and expose them to American cultural traditions, and the students always seem to enjoy having an untraditional English lesson to break-up their classic school routine. I offer the Halloween lesson for the youngest English learners (starting at grade 2 or 3 in the Elementary schools) as we share costume ideas, decorate pumpkins, recite a Halloween poem, play an alternative apple bobbing game (blindly choosing an apple from a bag for a team point), act out "trick-or-treating", and create lollipop ghosts to bring home! The lesson moves quickly in the 45 minute time slot, and the fun activities quickly fill up the time.
On Halloween, one club kid in Boskovice brought materials to make Tissue Paper Ghosts for a decoration. We enjoyed drawing lots of faces on the ghosts and snaking on some candy treats at club.
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We had our first sleepover club in the new building! Even though it was a full house, I was surprised how easily the kids moved between the activities or hung out in different areas of the clubhouse, just to chat with friends. There was definitely enough room for everyone to lay out sleeping bags and sleep; however, it wasn't completely needed since there were about a dozen pre-teens who decided they would rather spend the night chatting in the stairwell! At about 6am, we basically begged these teens to sleep for two hours before 8am breakfast - more for the leaders' benefit. It was a wonderful sleepover time together! It was during this sleepover that I really saw a couple young, new leaders emerge to help with the activities, cleaning, and organizing of the younger kids. I'm excited to see how their leadership will continue to grow during the next club activities!
Watch a short video about Sleepover Club HERE!
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We have started having church services and youth group in our new location regularly also! On Sundays, the walls seem to echo with worship as we arrive early to practice as a Worship Team and let our hearts praise God! The young mothers tell me that the sermon can be even heard throughout the hallways downstairs as they move around with their little children. New friends are starting to come to youth group on Fridays, and I was amazed at how even the newest attenders jump into helping us unpack boxes of chairs to set up for Sunday Service! We enjoyed the time together unwrapping the chairs and then some of the youth kids enjoyed creating cardboard box "robots". The friendships within this youth group is what brings me so much joy!
