Love is a Universal Language : June 2022

English Class - Level 1

New students arrived to English Class even in the last month of the school year! It is always so fun watching my class meet new friends while leading and encouraging each other. A handful of them were very excited that they will be back together for LetFest, our summer camp program, in a couple weeks.

Enjoying the outdoor games

When the boys aren't in English Class, the girls take silly pictures!

The students had so much fun with our Fairytale Kingdom theme. They especially liked learning words like "dragon" and "unicorn" which many school teachers don't seem to teach, but are frequent in children's vocabulary. I was amazed at how clever the students were in connecting the words to each other. One week we learned "fountain" and a student said, "A few weeks ago, we learned mountain! They are rhyming words." After sharing this discovery to the class, I noticed many of the students easily remembered these words for the rest of the theme.

Game Time!

My students have been addicted to Gerald & Piggie and Pigeon books. During the year, we read them all, but with one last week of English Class and all out of these books, I had one last special book to tie it all together (specially delivered!). It's a book about another Elephant and Pig (cleverly named "Harold and Hog") who act out Gerald and Piggie characters in a funny way. The older class got the humor of the story right away; however, my younger class - who are so attached to their book characters - reacted to the cover by saying "Who are these impostors?! They are not Gerald and Piggie!" Though, by the end of the book, they agreed they liked it.

Story Time!

English Class - Level 2

For the last couple of weeks of English Lessons, the second class and I put together all that they had learned throughout the year to practice English Grammar and Conversations through various games. It was exciting to see the students' confidence in speaking and putting together all they had learned to achieve in the games. Some of them even surprised themselves with all they were able to do, and I was so proud of all their hard work and effort.

A Cookie Game after reading "The Duckling Gets a Cookie?!"

As summer is starting, some families take their children out of school the last few weeks of June to go on a family vacation before the summer rush. Since some students were disappointed that they would miss the last week, they tried to convince their classmates to end a week earlier. No one thought ending sooner was a good idea, but suddenly I had 10 students asking me if we can have English Class weeks longer - even asking if we can have class through summer! I was surprised and touched, but reassured them that we would start right in September. To which one student said, "But do we have to wait until September? That's so far away!" The students agreed that they would wait and be excited for class again in September, and they are already looking forward to coming back together again next school year.

(1) In this class, the students had notebooks to write all the things we learned during the year and practice English. I loved seeing how they improved - creating cartoons from our book characters! (2) On the last day, we get to "dress-up" like Gerald and Piggie too.

Little Linguists

There is nothing more joyful than a room filled with toddlers! Little Linguists grew until the end as more mothers and toddlers came to check out the fun activities. There are smiles all around as the Littles meet up with their friends and get excited for the lesson, and moms all happy to have a cup of coffee in their hands.

This lesson with the Littles was all about Circles! They made circle art, watched the big parachute circle go up and down, and danced over and over again as we sang about circles.

I made a new lesson about finding a dragon. (I had some left-over pictures from English Class that I was excited to use with the Littles.) We each took on a character role - princess, king, knight, etc. - and marched in a line as we went through different obstacles to find the dragon! In the end, I had cut out dragon pictures in our tunnel and the students one at a time crawled through the tunnel and caught the dragon! They had so much fun with this new lesson! We used the blocks to create castles, and then catapulted toy balls at the structures to collapse them and start again. It's definitely a lesson I will be repeating next year!

For the final lesson of the school year, we sang "Fruit Salad" - a favorite among the students and very "summery." To bring the lesson to life, I created a massive Mega Lego Kitchen that fit all the kids as they jumped between cooking, serving, washing dishes, cutting, and matching the toy fruits! One of my former students whose little brother comes to Littles came for our last lesson. When we started singing "Fruit Salad", I noticed right away she remembered all the words. Looking to her mom, I asked, "Do you practice this song at home?" She replied, "No... she just remembers it!" Even after a few years of not coming to Little Linguists as she is in preschool, this little girl has remembers the songs we sang - and she is so excited to join English Class - Level 1 next year!

Kid's Club

The weather got quickly hot here, and we realized that the kids were either inside or at the community pool to cool off. It stays pretty cool in our building, so the kids often camped out at club centers, only leaving for quick ice cream treats downtown. Each club center is so different, but that's exactly what I enjoy about each one. The kids get to be kids. They play games together, build friendships, and grow in their own skills. I especially love watching the older kids interact with the younger kids. Recently, they've played Dodgeball together, Foosball games, or even just bouncing a ball around the courtyard together.

The kids have been asking to play BINGO more recently as they like just relaxing, checking off boxes, and winning a candy treat.

When playing Headbandz with these boys, the one on the left said, "Is my animal as small as a mouse?" His brother and I couldn't stop laughing as we tried not to give away that his card, in fact, WAS a mouse!

Winning against the "Big Boys" at Foosball and then counting baskets outside made this little club-attendee so happy!

Youth Group & Leadership Academy

We are getting ready for our big summer outreach event, LetFest, and the youth kids are stepping up to the plate! All year, we have been working with a group of our youth students in a Leadership Academy program to give them confidence and leadership skills. The central part of the program is to look at Jesus's leadership and then replicate His leadership in our own world. Even for student who didn't grow up in the church or aren't believers, we can all agree Jesus was a fantastic leader and has excellent leadership traits that we can learn from. What I love about this group is how it wasn't ever an exclusive group for just a dozen kids, but they started inviting their friends to join our meetings and our team of Leadership Academy has grown. Our motto - "to make disciples who make disciples" - has been put into action before they realize they were doing it! I am most excited to see how they will use all that they have learned in the next couple of weeks as we prepare and lead LetFest. I'm not at all worried about this group of young leaders. I have full confidence they are well prepared to put all their learnings into action.