And the Programme Begins!

Today was the first day of the children's summer programme at our church. We all had to be there by 8.30am in the morning for a 9am start. We got there slightly late...as usual, but fortunately things hadn't really begun yet.

We started the programme with some games as we waited for all the kids to arrive. We were a little caught off-guard as we hadn't thought much about the games in the morning! The younger kids played simple games like Duck, Duck, Goose while we managed to come up with games such as Octopus, this game where boys and girls had to tag the other before they reached the other end, and the shark game involving a parachute, where kids who were underneath the parachute were the sharks!

The real programme started at 9.30, when the kids were welcomed and told of the rules, and then it was down to me to do some singing with them. I led one song 'Awesome God' with the kids with Joylynn and Antonia as my helpers and Aonghas playing keyboard for me. It's quite simple and short, so I just had to mix it up a bit, getting the kids to sing the song a little different each time, such as singing it quieter and then really loud. I like how when you get them to sing it really loud, they get really into it and start shouting! It makes you feel good!

Tim and Tania, who usually come to our church to run the programme, were running all the activities today, so they played some games and told a few stories to the kids while us helpers sat among the kids to support them. I got in a little trouble for talking a bit too much. Thanks a lot Rebecca, she's always getting me in trouble!

It was time for morning tea, and so the kids went to wash their hands before they came back to eat. I was the leader of the dark blue group, with Alex, Ben and Eva helping out. Our group consisted of nine-year-olds, including Enoch and Tommy, two kids who I'm very familiar with at church! I was surprised at how little the kids ate! There were still biscuits, chips and fruit left on the plates afterwards!

After morning tea, Tim and Tania continued with their programme. All the kids got into their activity groups (different to their craft groups, the age of the kids are all mixed) and were asked to discuss the questions put up on the powerpoint. Each group then had to send two representatives up to Tim to give an answer, with the team giving the best answer giving points. Our team was the smallest for some reason! NO wonder our group (the skulls with the hat) had been losing all day! I always seem to be put in the losing group!

The last activity we did with the kids was craft! Today's craft was making an edible treasure chest, using jelly beans, fruit loops, Cheerios, icing sugar and those healthy wafer biscuits. Once again the kids were quite quick and finished making their creations very fast! They soon started to just eat the lollies straight out of the bowl! To be honest, I was expecting a whole lot more trouble from these kids!

The programme ends at around midday each day, and we still had a few minutes to spare, so I was asked to do singing with the kids one more time. I just repeated the same song I did with them earlier in the day.

All of us helpers remained behind for a bit of a review of the day, and then lunch!

The day went by quite fast! I guess it'll go by even faster when we're more involved tomorrow.

We all ended up leaving church by 3pm, but I got home and just found it absolutely boring! I had nothing to do! To make things worse, it was quite hot! I just ended up falling asleep on the laptop again! When I see everyone's statuses on Facebook about returning to work today, I kinda wish I had a job to go back to now! I really need the money!

There's Still Some Hope!

The past two weeks of music teaching have really put me off wanting to become a teacher, so I was looking forward to teaching this morning. However, I was pleasantly surprised when my students actually were able to play the music I had given them for homework, and my music theory students had actually done/attempted to do their homework!

There was an incident with a wasp flying around the classroom though, with all the children hiding behind the bookshelf at one point. I was getting frustrated as ten minutes had already passed, and I actually forcefully told them to sit down! Even I was surprised with myself! One of the girls started crying for some reason though and then sat underneath the desks for a little while which was a bit weird.

I made the class run over time to make up for it though so it's all good!

Dress-Ups

It was the last day of the children's summer programme today which was a little sad after doing it all week! I suppose it had to end sometime! 

We started the morning off a little differently to the past four days. Instead of games and singing, we had a bit of a fashion show as today was DRESS-UP DAY! Because the theme of this summer programme has been 'Time Traveler', the children were asked to dress up as someone from a time period in the past or future. It's quite unspecific so everyone just came dressed up in anything. 

We had a princess (Amelia), fairy (Jireh and Derek), Japanese girl (Jane and Aonghas...he was Japanese guy though!), slave girl (Jenny...or was she supposed to be Egyptian girl?), mouse (Angie), cowgirl (Lisa), Matrix guy (Hamish), soccer player (Andrew), Santa Claus (Ben), boxing guy (Karvin), painter (Joylynn) and I was Lin Da Lung from Hi My Sweetheart, a Taiwanese drama Rebecca, Grace and I have been watching for the past few weeks! Naturally as a geek I got beaten up a bit!

Once everyone went paraded and showed off their costumes, we moved on to the first game, Noughts and Crosses which was led by Peter and Hamish. I didn't really see it as I was in the back room preparing for the interview which I was going to do straight after with Cleo.

Today's final edition of 'Time Point News' saw Cleo interviewing interviewing me as Thomas, one of Jesus's disciples. I just wore a bath robe and a piece of material. I hadn't rehearsed or memorised most of my lines, so I had to wing it with Cleo. Luckily Cleo went along with it. I did remember to tell the jokes that were in the script, but hardly anyone laughed until I signaled everyone to! 

After our interview, Rebecca and Derek led a game with the kids before Terence and Ben played Feet and Stare with the kids. Andrew and Ruth played a game on time periods with the kids before the final Bible story and group time. This time all groups got points (I think they were just being nice!).

The kids had morning tea before we had the final craft time in which they made clocks. Something we hadn't been doing for the past four days was telling the kids the relevance of the craft work, so before all the kids got stuck into it, Jireh and I told all the kids about how we have 24 hours in a day and that how we spend those 24 hours is up to us.

After craft, we had prize-giving. Expectedly, our team Frankie didn't win. In fact, we came last! The prizes were handed out to the kids while the rest of the kids got bookmarks, a toy and a lolly (all the prizes that we had bought the day before!). It did get a bit messy with kids appearing out of nowhere, and trying to get kids to stand together with their groups for group photos!

We eventually got everyone to pose for one huge group photo before we let them go home.

The programme finally came to an end! We had our last lunch, before celebrating Derek's mum's birthday by singing Happy Birthday to her (no surprises as to who was asked to lead it!). 

As everyone started leaving, we had to clean up the church. Some of the parents carried on talking and so a water fight broke out amongst us young people. 

After a while we sorted ourselves out into two groups - past and present Rutherford vs Rangitoto Capture the Flag in the car park! Rangitoto-ians won by one!

We finally left church partially soaked. My mum wanted to do some shopping at Westgate, so Hamish and I were stuck in a hot car and ended up falling asleep! We did a whole lot more of that when we got home too. We were wasted!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF2pN0LNOCY)

Thursday's Here!

I'm running out of creative titles for blog posts so that's the best I could do! 

I'm not presenting anything till tomorrow so I didn't think I'd have much to do today, but because Jane was sick, I had to welcome the kids in the morning and do the opening prayer. 

Once that was done, it was onto the games! The older kids did Tug o' War, boys vs girls once again. I brought some gardening gloves to give to the boys, hoping it'd give them an edge but it didn't seem to do much, with some kids telling me it made the rope more slippery!

The boys won the first round, which gave us hope that maybe they would win this year (unlike last year when the girls won!). The girls won the next round though and were on a roll, going on to win the final round and overall!

It was then the helpers vs the kids! We won quite easily, obviously! Meanwhile, the younger kids were playing with the parachute.

Rebecca's mum led the singing with the kids getting into it, 

before Andrew and Jireh led the first game of Connect the Dots. I can't quite remember who won now, but I'm pretty sure it was the guys! That would've gone some way to making up for that loss to the girls in Tug o' War!

For today's edition of 'Time Point News', Amelia would be interviewing the Roman soldier Joylynn who climbed out of the time machine we made on Monday afternoon! Her costume was quite creative, and Amelia looked like she was a Rutherford College prefect...at least the top half of her anyway!

Amelia stayed up there to play a game with Aonghas, testing the kids' knowledge of everything that had been going on over the past week. Disappointingly the game ended in a draw between the boys and girls. I'm a little suspicious about that result!

Jireh then came back up to play the game Mr Squirt with the kids. He did it slightly different to me, in that he gave the kid a water gun to point at him while he held a smaller one!

After the serial story, Joylynn and Eva got kids to come up and try unlock a box that was full of chocolate and lollies. The kids had to pick a random key from inside a bag and try fit it into the lock. After a while none of the kids could manage to open the box! A little later when there was free time though we returned to the game so that someone could claim all those lollies and chocolate!

Tim told the kids a Bible story and then anyone who had questions or wanted to know more about God were asked to stay behind while the rest went for morning tea. I was a little relieved that I didn't have to counsel any kids again today.

Yesterday for craft, the children had to make a key ring. Today, they would be making a key ring holder! The key ring holder would be in the shape of a person, but was really up to the child to decorate how they saw fit.  

There were many interesting designs. Someone made a Vege Tales character, while someone made a munted face and someone else made a monobrow.

Finally, to finish the day the kids participated in a lolly scramble! Some kids came away with a handful of lollies! I think one of the kids gave me one lolly, but some saw me as a rubbish man and gave me their rubbish!

We all had lunch, while some of the kids went outside to have a water fight.

After lunch, we prepared for the fashion parade we'd be having first thing in the morning tomorrow, and also had to make the bookmarks we'd be giving each child as a prize at the end of the day tomorrow.

Because I was in charge of prizes, I still had to go buy some, so on our way home, my brothers, Jireh and I went to the Christian store to buy some prizes. After we dropped Aonghas off at work, my mum and I did some more shopping at West City. We almost spent all night shopping for prizes! I hope they like them!

The Half Way Point

OK, third day of the Summer Programme and we're all starting to get worn out! We once again started out with the games, getting the kids to play with the parachute

before we had children's singing.

Cleo and Angie have been playing music for children's singing while Rebecca's mum has been leading it. They've been doing a pretty good job all week, with the kids really getting into it. 

Derek and Joylynn led a game called 'Pairs' which is sort of like 'Memory' where you have to get pairs. It was once again boys vs girls, and this time the boys won!

For the 'Time Point News' segment today, Aonghas was back this time interviewing Benjamin, son of Benjamin (the shepherd), aka Ben Ben Ben (wait for possible laughter) who was played by Ben (coincidence? I think not!)

Ben did quite well out there! The kids loved it. I think he's destined to become an actor one day!

Joylynn and Antonia tested the memories of the children by playing a game requiring them to answer questions about anything that had happened over the past few days at the Summer Programme.

It was then Aonghas's turn to play Feet and Stare with the kids, which was quite a mission for Aonghas to catch the kids out (they either had to look at their feet or stare). The night before he had printed out a list of rhyming words to use to try trick the kids. Eventually he did get whittle them down to a few!

After the serial story, Lisa and Cleo ran the Sword Drill game, where one boy and one girl had to run to their balloon, pop it, grab the piece of paper with the Bible verse then run back to the Bible and try find the verse with the first one to do so being the winner. 

Once again competition was intense, and once again today the boys won! I think today was the boys' day to shine!

We had group time once again and our team won very few points...once again. Tim and Tanya told a Bible story afterwards and asked if any kids had any questions about Christianity or wanted God in their life to stay behind while the others went to morning tea. Because I was one of the group teachers, I had to do counseling which I was a little nervous about! I got to the kids late though as I had just been in the toilet and all the other teachers had got the kids covered, so I guess I got off free!

For craft today the kids were making a key ring, which they could decorate in any way they liked!

Finally, to end the day the kids were each given a chocolate and then tried to see who could tear their chocolate rapper into the longest piece possible! Evangeline, one of the girls in my group did pretty well! I'm not actually too sure who won in the end though but I'm sure they made it to a metre at least!

Once all the kids left, it was time for lunch! Today's lunch was probably the best we've had so far! We got a choice of spaghetti or fried rice. I was hungry late in the afternoon in the past two days so my mum made sure I ate more than one plate this time. Grace gave me half of her fried rice, so I mixed it in with my bowl of spaghetti. I finished my first bowl and then went on to my second bowl that Grace had gotten for me. 

Rebecca who was next to me was still struggling with her first plate! We ended up having a competition to see who could finish first - Rebecca's first plate or my second plate! I'm proud to say...no competition! B-)