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.
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."
No comments:
Post a Comment