LetFest Recap Video from the Littlest English Class :)
LetFest
The month of July was centered around our Summer Outreach Festival - LetFest. (Truthfully, not just July, but a good half of the year goes into planning and preparing for LetFest.) It is one of the favorite weeks of the year for campers and leaders! LetFest is a multifaceted day-camp, and throughout this post, I will share with you all the joys of my week with these campers and friends.
English Class
After a short morning program, the campers split into two groups - English and Sports. While the Sports Group headed up to the field, the English Class students split up into five groups according to age and English level. For all the years I have taught Kid's Classes at LetFest, I have always taught the youngest group, and this time was no exception. However, unlike recent years, I had an American co-teacher, two translators, and a grandma-helper who all gave so much to make this week the best for these kids! We had 16 kids total in the youngest class.
Parrot Puppets to "repeat" our vocabulary words
For the week, our class were Pirates! Each day, we sang a Pirate song about getting on a Pirate Ship and going to different islands. We went to five different islands during the week to learn new English vocabulary and to find things to put in our Treasure Chests. (Each student had a party-box Treasure Chest to keep all their treasures. By the end of the week, their Treasure Chests were overflowing with all the things they did throughout the week!) We traveled to Rainbow Island to learn colors, Animal Island to learn adjectives, Jungle Island to learn nature vocabulary, Bug Island to learn about insects, and Treasure Island to learn directions. The kids had so much playing games all morning to learn the vocabulary. They were a clever group!
(1) Finding "Treasure" in a game to put in their Treasure Chests! (2) Making Play-Doh imprints of bugs.
By Friday, we had learned two of the siblings in our class live two hours away and had been camping out in a tent for the week with their dad at a nearby park so that they could attend LetFest! Their mom had attended LetFest the first year we had LetFest in 2011 (and I remember their mom!). When she saw that LetFest was happening again, she wanted her kids to be a part of it since she has so many great memories of her days at LetFest! The two older kids were in my class, and there are two younger siblings, one who camped out with dad too, and one who stayed the first half of the week with mom. Then on Wednesday, both kids were gone from LetFest for the day. I thought maybe they were sick, but on Thursday they were back and told me a new little sister had been born! (That's five kids under 7-years-old!) We later learned that their mom wanted them to be at LetFest so much that not even a new baby was going to change that. So, the dad took all four "big" kids and camped out with them for the final days of LetFest. I love thinking how LetFest impacts so many people and for the next generation! It's a legacy of God's love!
Collecting leaves, flowers, sticks, and sand on our Nature Walk.
Workshops
In the afternoon, we had time for workshops. Each day, a half-dozen or more different workshops were presented to the students, and they could try out what they wanted. Some of the campers were dedicated to their workshop, like those who attended a ballet or drama workshop each day and then presented their skills at the end of the week, and others rotated between a few different workshops each afternoon. I helped lead a baseball workshop one day with another American, and sharing my fondness for the sport with these kids was one of my highlights of the week! Some of the kids had great natural talent; it was fun to see a couple of them get a feel for catching, hitting, and even making a little slide to the bases. (Then, there were some kids with short attention-spans who made sand piles in the outfield and had "social hour," so we kept innings short and the kids rotating at batting and running the bases!) After teaching how to catch with the mitts, batting, and practicing running bases, we had time for two (simplified) innings, before we packed up and went back to our ELIM location.
A couple afternoons, I joined in the volleyball workshop on the old skatepark outside the ELIM building. (Volleyball being another one of my favorite sports!) Since there were many little kids jumping in and out of the game, we played a simplified version with the young kids that allowed them to catch the ball and toss it to a teammate or two before tossing it over the net. The leaders at the workshop did a great job at accommodating for those who wanted to play and be included in the game, even to the extent of lifting them up at the net to toss the ball over to the other side!
As students came in and out of the game, we just rotated kids into empty positions. At one point, many of my little friends joined my side of the court and the small players on the other team had just left. One friend on the other side said, "We should switch up teams. Your team is the Midget Team!" I said, "I'll take my chances with my Midget Team! I can't give them up!" The little kids and I had a lot of fun, and there were a couple of little star players on our Midget Team after-all!
For the last two afternoons, I led a "Creative Art" Workshop. I say "led" loosely as mostly I just laid out lots of materials and encouraged the kids to think of what they wanted to create or just to play and experience the materials. No structure, no rules, just creating! It's amazing all the things kids will come up with when they have a stack of pipe cleaners, beads, paper plates, stickers, googly-eyes, yarn, feathers, scratch-off papers, Play-Doh, cookie cutters, glue, scissors, and colored pencils!
Programs & Seminars
Our theme this year for LetFest was "Reborn." We chose this theme because we have had a three-year pause from LetFest. (Three years ago, we had LetWork as we were in the process of moving buildings, and the past two years we have had CityCamp due to COVID restrictions.) LetFest was "Reborn" this year with a new generation! There were so many young campers - the youngest LetFest we have yet had, and for the majority of our youth leaders, it was their first time on the LetFest team. Afternoon programs and evening seminars centered around this theme of "Reborn" also through spiritual testimonies and incredible patterns in nature that declare evidence of a Creator.
During the programs, I was always surrounded by my little students. In one afternoon program, the speaker was sharing the details of the crucifixion of Jesus, and one of the campers leaned into me and whispered, "This is kind of scary." Before I could respond, the student on the other side of me (who is a few years younger than the other camper) whispered back, "Oh, don't worry. It sounds scary now, but I know this story and I know the ending is okay because that man, Jesus, is the son of God!" Suddenly, the other camper was intent on listening to the rest of the story as she waited to see how God's son conquered death. What surprised me the most is that the younger camper, from my understanding, isn't from a church-going family, though somehow she had heard this story before and remembered it. It had already left an imprint on her heart, and I can only imagine how God will continue to use that!
Evening Activities
To close out the night at LetFest, we always finished with some sort of evening activity. This time was special for us leaders because most of the little kids would get picked up in the afternoon and then our friends who had attended LetFests in years past would join us for evening seminars and games. It was fun to reconnect with many friends! We had a Karaoke Night/Jam Session, a Concert, a Skit Performance, and a Quiz Night! I joined my group of longtime friends for the Quiz Night, and we had a lot of fun sharing snacks and guessing many of the answers. The Skit performance was quite powerful as some of the young members of our youth group performed a skit about how God rescues us from different addictions. I was inspired that these youth students invited their parents and friends to see the performance.
Prague
I joined the American Team in Prague for their debriefing time and to act as a tour guide around our beautiful capital. The team this year was exceptional and served with every drop of energy they had. Many of them are lifelong mentors of mine, and I loved watching them impact my students throughout the week also. We all finished LetFest feeling tired, worn-out, and some of us sick, but we also finished full of joy, encouraged, and "Reborn."
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