Our character quality for the day was obedience. In our first small group I taught our class three simplified “keys” of obedience. This is how it went:
Katrina: “The first key to obedience is ‘I will do it right away.’” (I explain what “doing it right away” means and Tim translates for me.)
Katrina: “Now, I want you to repeat after me.” (Tim translates and I get ready to point to the words on the board)
Katrina: “I will”
Class: “I will”
Katrina: “do it”
Class: “do it”
Katrina: “right away!”
Class: “right away!”
Katrina: “I will do it right away!”
Class: “I will do it right away!”
Katrina: “Again!” (Tim translates)
Katrina: “I will do it right away!”
Class: “I will do it right away!”
We continue to repeat it several times with simple motions until I feel that most of the 15 kids are saying the phrase. Then we go on and follow this pattern for learning the other two “I wills” of obedience. “I will do it with a smile” and “I will do it all the way.” I then had them right these out in their notebooks. After I felt that they were familiar with the sound as well as the way the words looked I divided them up into two teams to play a game. I wrote out two sets of the “I wills” and cut them apart. On the count of three we dropped the pieces in the middle of each team and then watched to see which team could put the words in order the fastest. The kids here have a strong sense of competition so it was quite the sight to see them scramble to get those words in order! We had them play this several times to see if they could beat their previous times of completion. I don’t know how much of this lesson they will remember but I guess the most important thing is that they had fun!
In our second small group Tim taught the kids how to make a more complicated paper airplane. We did this to show them that it’s important to listen carefully and “obey” each instruction that they are given in order for their plane to turn out. After every child was the proud owner of a paper airplane we went up to the balcony for the first flight. Before we let them fly their planes I had them repeat several times in English what they were holding in their hands, “Paper airplane! Paper airplane!”
I don’t know how useful “paper airplane” is in a child’s vocabulary but I figured they should know in English what they just made. Sometimes it is so hard to know what kind of vocabulary should be taught, especially when they practically don’t know any English. But we decided that this week we would focus on having fun with the kids instead of feeling like we needed to drill, drill, and drill some more. Most of these kids have experienced a lot of trauma in the past few weeks and they’re not really interested in going to an English camp that feels like school. So we’re trying to have fun with them and show them that we love them and want to be their friends.
Please pray that the Lord would give us wisdom to know what to teach and a large dose of creativity so that the kids can remember this camp as a fun time with the “American teachers.”
Katrina, writing from Taichung
