Competition? Bring it on!!

13 October, 2012

Venkata Ramana School, Alwarpet.

     The Social Causes Club was back in action at VRS, after a month of studying for exams. A team of 8 volunteers reached the school at around 10.30 am which is the usual time sessions for VRS begin. After rounding up the 20 kids at the school, we split them into 4 groups. Saying rounding up makes it sound so simple that I feel the need to elaborate:
     These kids belong to 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. They are at the peak of their energy and the boys can barely sit still for a few seconds. They are exceptionally interested in tackling each other to the ground. We would get a couple of them to sit, but by the time we get to the rest, they would start running around and the cycle goes on....Outnumbered, it was a while until we could finally get them settled.

     Each group was led by utmost two volunteers.As they settled into their groups, we handed each group a chart and asked them to draw something relevant to their topic after which they would talk about it. The teams chose their own topics for making presentations - family, Pongal , Deepavali and  maps. We found that they could come up with a lot of ideas for both speaking as well as drawing. Given sketches and crayons, their indulgence knew no bounds. We gave them close to half an hour to finish drawing and then they started their presentations. Each team went on stage and spoke about the topic assigned to them. While some kids were more comfortable speaking in Tamil, others tried to learn by talking in English.

    For their age group, being barely ten years of age, they did amazing. They could learn whatever the volunteers taught them very easily and competition made them more enthusiastic.At the end of the presentations, we chose the winner to be the team Family - Kavya, Lokeshwaran, Vaishali and Swetha. We gave them their gifts and then distributed biscuits among the kids. After that the volunteers spent some more time with the kids before winding up.

    What we realized after the session was that handling primary school kids was getting tougher day by day. Settling them and making them listen is easier said than done. We realized that we could handle high school children much better than primary school kids. Yet, we knew we had accomplished a lot that day - making the students come forward on stage and speak in a language they were barely fluent in, was an achievement in itself. It makes me proud to say that the Social Causes Club has made another event successful and there shall be many more to come... 

We talk, we dance, we play, we learn...!!!

          Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

Oh boy, didn't we learn that! 

11th August, 2012

            It was only the second school visit by the Social Causes club, yet the number of volunteers had risen to hover around 20... After the first visit none of us could actually wait to meet the kids at Olcott again but our agenda included visiting multiple schools, so we steered ourselves toward another school - Venkata Ramana Primary School... Clearly, it was a challenge since we were to handle kids of grades 3,4 and 5. So,  completely perked up, we made our arrangements with a different set of activities and set  off.
        In the short while that we were settling the kids down,we realized one thing that hadn't changed from the previous visit - the excitement of the kids. They were extremely active and indulgent. We started off with the usual introductions by the kids followed by some fun games...
             We split the kids into 4 teams of about 5 students each and had  one or two volunteers with each team. We took some general pictures with us which we asked them to identify. The kids could identify most of the pictures and the volunteers helped them out when they couldn't. They were more than willing to answer, thanks to the chocolates we handed over to the ones who did!!
              After that we had a crossword quiz containing the names of toys. We reckoned it would be easy but we were way off the mark on that one. The kids knew the words that we had chosen but they didn't know how to spell them, which made guessing a hard task.. We understood that we should teach them simpler stuff before trying out these kind of games.  Then we arranged the kids into a circle and played a word building game which was fun too.

             To end the session we had them dance to the tunes of 'Why this kolaveri...'  which brought most of the kids to the floor. They were enjoying themselves so much that we could just sit and watch them dancing with all their heart. Yet again, we were surrounded by pleas to come again and to spend more time with them.Finally we walked out the school with the same sense of happiness that we'd found in Olcott Memorial School and the longing to be with these kids as often as shall be possible....