Tuesday, October 4. The TL project is an after school activity. The week we are here is a school break for South Africa so the kids do not have school. What we are involved in is SMART camp (Science, Math, Art, Reading, and Technology). We divided up into groups of two (ahead of time) and picked a subject. Rich and I are doing science; Karen and Debi math; Caroline and Cheryl are; Tina and Cathy reading; and Linda and Kurt technology. The day starts with an activity for all the kids. The first day they were divided into 5 groups and the chose a name and a “war cry”. Here is the war cry judged the most creative.
After the groups were chosen, we started the actual camp. Each group went to all five areas for 20 minutes. It was a hectic time to cover the material we had planned in 20 minutes. Schaun had told us the previous night that the content we taught was important, but it paled in importance with the fact that we were there and that we cared for and loved the kids. We discovered there was a fairly large language barrier. They understood some English, but were certainly not fluent.
The 20 minutes passed quickly; one group left and another came in. Day one was a learning experience for both groups. The kids were learning our style and sizing us up. We were learning how to communicate with them and how to get across what we came to teach. It was very tiring. But, we had fun and the kids seemed to have fun as well.