Last week was the first week where we lead activities for kids who came to the centar. It was a bit of shock/nerve racking to go from planning things to actually having to do them.
Things were a bit rough the first few days. We ended up not having enough planned to fill two hours and needed to improvise a lot. We were also disorganized and had difficulties getting kids to follow the sign up sheets we had made. It is also difficult to lead activities when you cannot speak the same language as the children you are trying to lead. Luckily we have a bunch of teen volunteers who help us with translations, but for the first few days we had to figure out the best way to have them translate. Eventually we just decided to talk to the kids in English or broken Bosnian and have the teens translate after each thing we say.
We have organized each day of the week into a certain category. Monday is games and drama day. Tuesday is English lessons. Wednesday is dance and ukelele lessons. Thursday is craft day. Friday is sport day.
Granted we haven't stuck to this completely, but we do try and give the kids different activities each day. Last Tuesday was probably the most difficult, because we realized that we can't actually have the kids sit and listen while we try and teach them English, so instead we started to play games that use English words and have them try and learn by playing.
The picture above shows the craft that we did last Thursday. Because Thursday was the opening of the World Cup of Soccer/Football/Nogomet, we had the kids draw the flags of the different countries participating in the tournament. It ended up going really well, so we decided to post up their flags in the centar afterwards.
So far this week has gone more smoothly, we've had to adapt a few things because it has been really rainy, bu things have definitely been progressing better. We already have a better system in place and things will only get better from here! (hopefully!)
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