On Thursday afternoon we hosted the RdS Kids Club. This was the only event that we were actually late for. These children have been so excited that we were coming back to the community and so excited for the kids club that they were already in the community centre when we got there.

This year the group was a bit smaller (which was actually quite nice) due to the time of the day that it happened at. The school day in RdS either is from 8-12.30 or from 1.15 – 6.45pm and so many of the older children in the age group were at school.  The age range of the group was from 3 years old to 11 years old.

We started out with about 60 kids and ended up with about 90 children.  Descriptions from the team about the time ranged from energetic, intense and exhausting to fun!

It was a very fun time and taught them the chicken dance, shared a story about families (with impromptu acting out of the story by the rest of the team memebers), and played a game with lots of words around things we want in our families and those we don’t.  Examples of these were honesty, yelling, repsect etc etc.

We then broke into groups and tried to have some organization as each group spent some time at each station.   The stations were a craft  (similar to the game), face painting and balloons.   We had this great idea that we would put a check mark on every child’s hand in each colour that coincided with the station so that each child would only do each station once.   It worked very well for about an hour and then it unraveled and became a little more chaotic.

Interestingly enough, the children all knew the right answers to the questions we asked as well as the questions we asked in the game.   It was very encouraging that they know what a family should be like – whether or not that happens at home.   This is encouraging to me because the knowledge and understanding is there and therefore as theygrow and mature they will have the ability to break the bad cycles of things that are happening in their families.

One change that I saw in the chilren from the last time I was here was an ability to handle a bit more structure and to follow instructions more easily.  

I was involved in the face painting station and I was amazed at how many requests I got to paint a spiderman face!  Butterflies were also very popular!

All in all it was a very fun time and I think that we all (our team and the children) learned alot and had a great time.

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