Playing with Kids...Legally

Today was the first day of the children's holiday programme at my church, and I was helping out. We had to have a meeting for it yesterday as soon as I got back from the airport to sort things out. When we got there I caught up with Jennifer who asked me where I was and told me that Angie showed up at church, just when I didn't come to church! Anyway we spent three hours planning what everyone would do, how the games would be run and so on and so on. I was put in the blue group with Jennifer, Hamish and our leader Karvin. My name was put down as CALEB! Hamish would be going to Summer School so it would only be Jennifer, Karvin and me.

We had to practise some counselling with the person next to us, even though most of us weren't going to do the counselling (especially me!). I paired up with Jennifer who first acted as the teacher and managed to get through seven pages of this little booklet we each got in three minutes. When it was time for me to be the teacher, she played a little kid so well I only got through one page of the little booklet, and not very well! There was this drawing of this person knocking on the door. I tried explaining it to her:

"So....on the other side of this door is Jesus, and you have to kno..."

when Jennifer interrupted...

"I think that guy knocking on the door is Jesus"

She then went on to ask

"Who's Jesus? Is he goood? Is he hot???"

Stupidly I replied

"Not as hot as me!!" forgetting that I was supposed to be counselling to a 6-year-old GUY! Yeah...best that I don't counsel little children...

Anyway today was the real deal. Aonghas and I got to church early in the morning so we could play our duet to the singing leader (who we had to accompany). We were a bit apprehensive about this as we thought our playing on the accordion sounded a bit weird and gumby! The singing leader thought it was good so that was OK.

The official programme started with a welcome and then a bit of singing. This is where we came in. We had to play the song (Father Abraham) while the little kids did their actions fast...and then slow....and then normal. After that we played some games like hospital tag and this game where we we could only run to grab a cone whenever the guy said green light but not when he said red light. If he caught us moving then we had to go back to the start. I was getting a little bored so I thought I'd have a go at cheating. This little kid caught me though and started shouting at me and watching me closely! He told on me to the other teen leaders who didn't really take much notice of him. When they asked what my name was he looked at my name tag and saw that it sad CALED (yep another take on CALUM) and then started calling me SALAD!!!

The whole holiday programme was based around Narnia, so there was story-telling time and we did a bit of craftwork with out group making lion masks, as well as having a castle-making competition. Our castle had portable canons, giant mufflers (so the castle can move), and can somehow fly...We were all winners though! :D 

The programme finished at midday, when all us helpers had some lunch (rice yumyum) and then Aonghas got called to work again, when he had been told he wasn't needed for the rest of the week! That meant I was going to be home by myself (and the parents) again! So I decided to walk down to the library myself and spend a few hours there finding something to do. Well...I watched a bit of sport on the TV there (they have Sky Sport in the kids section!), tried reading a book but falling asleep, more successfully spent probably an hour reading newspapers and the National Business Review, and unexpectedly caught up with Ben who was with his mum!