VIA at Good Sheperd Student Care, June 20-21 2016

Hello Guides! (:

 

On 20^th and 21^st June, our guides headed down to Good Sheperd Student Care Centre to carry out our Values In Action programme! There were many exciting things installed for the kids there!

 

Day 1

 P4 Orchid did baking with the Primary 3s-6s in the morning and P6 Morning Glory continued with baking Funfetti cupcake for the P1s and 2s in the afternoon.

 

 

Day 2

 

P1 Bougainvillea taught the P3-6s how to dance in the morning and P5 Sunflower taught the P1s and 2s dancing in the afternoon. P2 Ixora and P3 Jasmine also prepared a carnival for all the children in the late afternoon!

Reflections from a guide…

For the VIA at Good Shepard's centre I was part of the game booth. For the game, we blindfolded the children. We placed objects in their hands and let them guess what the object was. Initially our three objects were a cow soft toy, a clapper and a guitar keychain. We gave them the guitar keychain first because we thought it would be harder. However, the children guessed what it was fairly quickly, especially some of the children who came to our booth later. It might have been because the children who played the game first told the rest the answers. Next time I think we should bring a greater variety of key chains to prevent this from happening. A lot of children knew what the clapper was but did not know what it was called. They took the longest time to identify the clapper as most of them thought it was just a "hand", which is technically true. Next time I think we should give them something simpler and more commonly known among their age group. It was quite a surprise for us as we did not know that many children did not know what a clapper was called  The children could identity what the cow soft toy was fairly easily but was unable to figure out what animal it was. We had to give them hints. I think it was good practise for us because our hints could not be too vague, but at the same time we had to give them the chance to figure it out themselves. We told them that "it was a farm animal" and that "it ate grass". We couldn't tell them that it had horns as that would give it away, so we told them to feel the top of the head where there were two small horns protruding out. Oddly enough, a lot of them thought it was a dragon when they felt the horns. After a while we had to improvise as quite a number of children went back to our booth for the second time. We had them earphones and hair clips and coins. I think coins were the most effective as the children had to guess the value of the coin. I personally thought it would be too challenging for them. I was pretty impressed when most of them managed to guess  the value of the coin without our help. The VIA was a good opportunity for us to learn to interact with people outside of our age group. We had to be mindful to use simple words that the children could understand. We also had to be gentler than usual when blindfolding them as a few of them complained that I was tying it too tight. Interacting with the children was a overall fun and rewarding experience.

Reflections from a guide…

Today we went for VIA, and our patrol was assigned to teach the P1-3 children how to do a simple dance. The day before, we had met up to practice together before coming for the VIA. When we reached the venue, we found the kids really adorable and cute, hence most of us were really excited to interact with them. Hence, we got to the demonstration almost right away and then, we taught them the dance step by step. However, there were several times when we were unable to control the children as they would become too loud or too excited, and occasionally the teacher would have to step in. On the other hand, there were also around 4-5 children who refused to learn the dance, and they just sat at the back of the room. Although many of us have tried to talk to them, it was all in vain as they remained unwilling to be engaged in the activity.
After we finished teaching them part of the dance, we decided to spice things up by changing it into a games section. We split the children into 2 groups and played duck duck goose with them, which turned out to be quite successful as the children evidently enjoyed themselves more.
In the end, everyone had tremendous fun despite some hiccups, and we were happy to be able to bring joy to some of the children as well :-)

And that wraps up our VIA experience!

(this will be my final blog post as the secretary of the 47^th Batch J goodbye~)

 

Cheers,

Michelle
47^th Batch Secretary