Right from the Start

It was the first day of the Children's Summer Programme at our church today. We had a whole lot more children turn up on the day than planned, with the list totaling around 80 children.

The programme started at 9am after all the children had signed in and collected their name badges. Each child was in a colour group for craft as well as an activity group named after a character from the movie 'Meet the Robinsons'. I was the teacher in charge of the green group, the 8-9 year olds, and was also in Frankie the frog group. 

Since the co-ordinator Emily couldn't be with us this week due to work, Jane, a primary school teacher from our church and I had to be the 'MC's' for the programme. We got off to a bit of a shaky start since it was the first time either of us had done this as we welcomed the kids and introduced the helpers, but we got better over time!

The first activity of the day were the games. The older kids went over to one side of the gym to play some games while the younger kids were on the other side playing 'Duck, Duck, Goose' around a parachute. 

After the games, the kids did some singing along with some very creative actions

before Jane and Terence ran a game with the kids before it was my turn to go up to do a little skit with Eva called 'Time Point News', where an interviewer interviews a biblical character. Eva was the interviewer and I was Adam! 

I wore two panty-hose, one over my arms and the top half of my body and the other from the waist down, along with a black wig and a foam chest complete with abs that I got from the emporium a few days earlier. 

There were a few gasps when I came into the gym, holding a pot plant down by the crown jewels. I put the pot plant on top of a post I brought from home. I don't know whether I stood right behind it throughout the interview though, as a few people told me I wasn't standing behind it, and some kids came up to me afterwards and told me they could see my WHOOPIE! (I was wearing clothes underneath so they couldn't have seen it!)

I got in trouble the day before with Eva while rehearsing the skit with her as she didn't like it when I strayed from the script and improvised, so this time I tried to stick as closely to the script as possible and as well as I could remember and I think we made it to the end! The kids didn't laugh at the jokes though and some of the helpers forgot to laugh! (They were supposed to!)

As soon as we finished, I quickly got out of my costume and returned to the gym to join everyone. Andrew and Jireh played a quiz game where the children had to answer general knowledge questions correctly and throw a ball at a paper cup tower in order to get points for your team. By then we were way over time by about 40 minutes! We had to shorten a few of the activities, and some got cut altogether!

Rebecca and Angie did a toga race with the kids. It was funny as Rebecca's toga wasn't even properly done up and I don't think the kids knew how to do a toga either! They seemed to have fun though and did a few poses as well as earn points for their team.

After Tim and Tanya told a Bible story, all the kids went to wash their hands for morning tea at each of their colour group tables before we had craft time. 

For craft today the kids made robots! They were supposed to use cardboard tubes but because we didn't have enough, some just had to roll a card up. I was quite surprised at how creative the kids were!

We managed to finish on time and once the kids left, us helpers had lunch. Today was egg and tomato on rice, not exactly my favourite but I'm not one to complain (out loud!).

After lunch because it was Jireh's birthday today, Tommy and Harris's mum had baked a cake for him as well as Jane whose birthday was tomorrow, so we sang Happy Birthday for everyone who was celebrating a birthday this month (OK I suppose that includes me too!) before cutting up the cake and sharing it with everyone.

We were going to work on a cardboard box time machine by covering it up in tin foil and sticking a metal clothes hanger on top, but it sort of...broke on us so we gave up! I'm sure the kids didn't notice the lack of decorations this time around!

A Sunday School BBQ

After church today we went to Aunty Stephanie's (and Jennifer and Amelia's) house for a BBQ for our Sunday School class. This is the second time we've done this (I didn't realise the last one was in 2008!).

We all started off with the eating part, and that was really good. There were heaps of sausages and meat, along with salad and coleslaw...yes coleslaw Amelia (she likes to call it salad which I suppose is also correct, but to the rest of us it's coleslaw!!)

I ate so much I actually got full, and I think the others got full too! While the adults continued talking outside, us young people went inside to talk for a while before the games started...

The first game Jennifer had organised for us was charades. We were put into three teams. Each team came up and had to guess the word one of their team members was trying to act out. In my team (Team Teletubbies) we had Angie and Esther, our Sunday School teacher John's daughter.

There were all sorts of things we had to act out like movies, clothing brands and objects. Sadly I kept having to get clothing brands, which I know nothing about! After three or so rounds, two teams (including ours) were in the lead. We had a bonus round and after that our team was leading!

During one of my team's rounds, I slipped over on the carpet and hit myself on the piano, hurting my leg. Only Calum could manage hurting himself like that...

In the next round, a representative from each team had to come up and be given a song name to go back to their team and hum, with the first team correctly guessing the song name getting a point. I was my team's representative and so I did all the humming, which was sometimes in sync and tune with the other team's representatives! I didn't think we did so well in that round, but strangely enough we won as well! Go Team Teletubbies!

We just listened to songs from Jennifer's playlist and tried guessing the names for a while before it was late and we had to go.

It was good fun being back at the Wong household! I'm enjoying all these BBQ's! 

A Surprise for Jireh

I made it back to church back in time for lunch, and a special surprise for Jireh, whose birthday will be this Monday. Joylynn, his younger sister had planned a little surprise birthday gathering for Jireh after Sunday School.

We all went into the new classroom and as soon as he came in we surprised him by singing 'Happy Birthday' to him.

There was a bit of food for us to share before we all joined in on a 'How well do you know Jireh' quiz. I liked to think I along with brothers Harris and Tommy were going to waste everyone, but a combination of not listening to the questions properly and...getting dates mixed up saw us only get 10 out of 17 questions correct! Carmen and Grace ended up winning (I bet it was just a fluke! grr!)

The surprise birthday ended with me presenting Jireh with the card we all signed for Jireh.

Happy Birthday for tomorrow Jireh!

NB Thanks On once again for photos!

Ready for the Kids

Our church's annual Children's Summer Programme is coming up next week and we had a training day for it today.

This year the theme is 'Time Traveller' and so is based around the movie 'Meet the Robinsons'. Each day till midday there will be a schedule filled with games, stories, singing and craft activities for the kids. We went through each activity today just to make sure each person knew what they would be doing.

 

This year I'll be doing two skits on two separate days that forms a series of skits called 'Time Point News', where an interviewer interviews a Biblical character. On Monday I'll be acting as Adam (as in Adam and Eve) so you'll have to wait and see what I wear/don't wear! On Friday I'll be acting as Thomas, one of Jesus's disciples (I think!).

I will also be running a game called Mr Squirt where I get a kid to come up and ask him/her these questions in which they're not allowed to answer 'yes' or 'no' to. If they do, I squirt them with a water gun, but if they don't within 30 seconds, then they get to squirt me!

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens this coming week!

Tangled Situation

Today a couple guys from my youth group had planned a get-together over karaoke in the city but our old neighbour had a day off and so we were going to catch up with him over breakfast or lunch. Our neighbour pulled out at the last minute though and the Chins invited us to go watch Tangled with them, so we decided to go since it was going to be at West City and it also wasn't too long, so we could get back home before our mum did!

I didn't really know what Tangled was about, except it was another Disney fairytale movie in 3D, but I have to say it was pretty good! The animation was much quite impressive! The story was a typical princess fairytale story . I won't say too much so I don't spoil it for people, but I have to admit the main character Repunzel was not too bad looking for a cartoon character if I may say so myself! (That sounds a little creepy doesn't it?)

We just hung out at the food court and had something to eat after the movie but it's definitely worth seeing, even if you're a guy!

This was probably one of my favourite songs from the movie, I See the Light by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5iFxpkz40o)