Ploi suggested that we have a “Practice Day”, where we invite lots of Burmese children and children from public schools and run the whole program with them and see what works and what doesn’t. That way we can have the best and tweaked program for the real seminar. (And PRAISE THE LORD for this idea, because without it we would have been doomed!) 

We expected more than 40 children, but only about half of that came, so we had to cut down our program into smaller and fewer teams. No biggie. But what a fun day it was! We ran the program with them from 9am to 2pm. And at the end we were so worn out! And it was only one day…can’t imagine how we will do it for 9 days straight with the teachers (we will need a TON of prayers on your end!)

We designed game stations where each one of us (teachers) is responsible for running two stations. The children have a treasure map where they go from station to station playing the games where they get to learn and practice their English. And for those who win the games, they have chances to earn some keys for the locked treasure box at the end of the conference. Teams have to collect and win as many keys as possible because there is only ONE key that opens the lock on the treasure box!

As children were going through our stations it was clearly visible what games worked and which didn’t work at all! Praise the Lord for this day because there are many changes that need to be done!  :O

I will describe only a few stations for you to get an idea of what went down:

~FASHION STATION~

Here the children had to split into 2 teams and they had to pick one member from the team and build a fashionable dress or something for them to wear out of much newspaper that was at their disposal. It was very fun to watch them as they tried to use their creativity.

Christoph (guy in pink) though apparently thought this game was not his thing so he just hung in the background and got too distracted by reading the newspaper instead of cutting it.  ;P  (it was pretty funny)

At the end two princesses had to stand together and get evaluated. I was impressed with what some children could do with bunch of newspaper, especially that very long tail on a dress – it was a nice touch.

Then we took a group photo, awarded some keys and children went to their next assigned station.

~SECRET CODE~

Natasha led this station. Here children had to use their brainpower because they were given a paper that is coded and they had to break the code, read what the paper said, and carry out the given command to move to the next code.

This game was pretty successful except that these kids turned out to be smarter than expected and broke through these codes with ease and the game ended much sooner than expected. So next time codes have to be more complicated.

~THE FINALE~

At the end we also played a few “guess-the-picture” games together and then the children lined up to test their key to see if they would be the lucky ones to win the treasure box.

And ironically, from all the children, CHRISTOPH was the one who’s key opened the box!!! (he was the one who wasn’t much involved in Fashion)  :D

Children got to have lots of fun on day and it was nice to see them smiling and laughing.

We took a group photo and called it a day.

Please pray as our preparations get more intense as we  are nearing the Teacher’s Seminar this next week. (March 25^th is the start, ends April 2^nd).