On December 25th, we celebrated the last Christmas of the decade with the kids at orphanage. This month, we have six small stations. Initially, one of the stations was suppose to be scavenger hunt, but we couldn’t come up with fun clues so we decided to freestyle an activity requiring balloons.

 

Having one of the members dress up as Santa is a really good idea. The kids loved him, following him anywhere, and we can see smiles all around.

Teaching Vocabularies

 

Some vocabularies are easy for them, such as “tree”, “Santa”, and “snow”, because people here use it quite often. But they struggle on terms such as “elf”, “chimney”, and “reindeer”. We had to find creative ways to help them remember. Sometimes connecting the pronunciation to a mandarin word that sounds similar helps them learn the terms faster. Once again, we play the vocab game at the end of the session, where we hold up a picture and the kids must say the corresponding vocabulary in English. The edition of Christmas theme pencils really encouraged them to learn.

 

Charades

In October, the charade station was pretty successful. It allows kids to interact with each other in a fun and goofy way and also thoroughly learn the vocabularies. We decided to incorporate that idea again this month. We used stockings to contain the terms. The kids were excited to pick out things from the stocking.

 

Don’t Drop the Balloon

 

This activity is a new idea. We decided to use balloons in our games, thinking that kids would like balloons. We were right. What we didn’t expect was that kids love the balloons too much. They wouldn’t follow the rules and decided to play who-can-steal-the-most-balloons-and-run-around instead. It went out of hand and we had to hide excess balloons from them in the corner. This activity might be scratched from future activities because it creates too much chaos and there’s not much English learning going on. (at least the kids enjoyed)

 

Create Paper Snowflakes

 

We were initially hesitant to use this station because it requires the kids to use scissors. (we had to be prepared for the worst case scenario) Luckily, things went smoothly and a lot of them really liked the snowflakes they crafted.

 

Balloon Catch

 

This is yet another activity requiring balloons. Fortunately, this activity was isolated from other activities, so kids from other activities won’t come and steal the balloons. We kind of modify the rules as we play on. When the first group of kids came to play, we realized that the half basketball court was too big, and it would be very challenging for the capturer to tag others while holding balloons between their bodies. So we decrease the size of the perimeter, and we made it so the more people get tagged, the smaller the perimeter gets, and the tagged person must become the capturer too with balloons between them. This game turned out better than we expected. No one got injured or got into a fight. However, the older kids still decided to not listen and started playing the balloons only and ignoring the rules.

 

Build a Snowman

   

This activity is probably the most successful one out of all activities. It didn’t require big movements so the kids were well contained. It also helps them learn new vocabularies (the snowman parts) in an interactive way. Though we forgot to bring blindfold (the idea was that the kid must assemble the snowman parts correctly blindfolded), we still manage to create the same effect by telling each kid to rotate twenty turns before placing the snowman parts.

 

Christmas Slam Game

 

This activity is like the cup game in November, but the kids can only roll the pingpong ball and there’s no English learning other than introducing the term “ball” and “snowman”. At least the kids played peacefully.

 

Gifts

 

It’s Christmas! Which means the Santa will give out gifts. We bought gummies shaped like bells, Christmas tree, Santa, reindeer, and snowman to give out to every kid and teacher. We also prepared four bags of special Santa candies as a reward for kids who remembered what they learned today.

 

Reflection

We did a pretty bad job in maintaining the overall order. Our station changing was very chaotic. We divided the kids into six groups and each group would start in one of the six stations and rotate clockwise every 10 minutes. However, since five of the stations were in the same vicinity, kids didn’t follow the rotation rule and ran to different stations when they were not suppose to. This same station changing method worked better in October because we prepared stamp cards for kids to collect stamps and exchange it for gifts. (The reason why we didn’t use the stamp cards was because we already spent money on buying the Christmas candies that the Santa gave out. Plus it takes a lot of effort and time to buy all the different gifts and design each “stamp” prize. Visit my previous blog on October Orphanage for more detailed information on the stamp cards.)

During future plannings, I need to remember to not include balloons or any activities requiring too much movements. I also need to discuss with my members about how to maintain better order and still make the activities fun.

This month, there were several new members who came to help. Nonetheless, everyone worked exceedingly well together — from being on time, to knowing each of their own jobs, to working well with the kids. And most importantly, everyone put all of their effort into making this event run smoothly.