Every other Friday is Friday club 🙂 J was actually ready at a reasonable time without any hassle so we got there without stress 😀 Even better, we were joined there by Big Alice, who had a day off and couldn’t think of anything more exciting to do than spend it with us 😉
We have a structure which remains the same for each meeting and then we take it in turns to organise what fits into each slot. We start with a few minutes of worship, which could be reading a Bible passage, thinking about it and then a prayer together, or looking at an area of the world where there are difficulties and then praying for the people who live there, or perhaps straightforward praise, with songs, prayer, even dance – it’s up to whoever is leading to decide. Then we have a few minutes devoted to music, which could be a chance to practise songs for worship next time, listening to music, singing nursery rhymes, playing instruments – again it’s up to whoever is leading to arrange it as they wish. After that we usually see if anyone has brought anything along to show or tell the rest of the group and then we have snack time – tea and coffee for adults, water for children and usually some kind of home-baked goodies to share – followed by a quick play (outside if weather permits) while we set the room up for the main activity. In theory this alternates between science and art/craft, but we are flexible so if there is something which needs a couple of weeks that’s fine and if we have a visiting teacher who can only make a particular date or a topic which we want to cover but which doesn’t really fit under either umbrella then we just squeeze it in somehow 😉 We try to do a nature walk at least once a season/term as well. The main activity usually lasts about an hour, then we clear away and one or two of the adults do games or stories while the rest sort things out for lunch, which we eat together in the building in winter and at the rec in summer; spring and autumn vary according to weather. Much of the afternoon is then spent at the local rec, where the mums huddle round a table with a flask of tea, setting the world to rights, while the children run wild in the undergrowth or play in the playground. We have a perennially recurring debate about sticks and whether boys should be allowed to “be boys”…
Anyhoo, this week we started with prayer and song, then music, which turned out to be singing along to a couple of songs from The Gruffalo songbook and doing lots of silly actions; it was great and fitted perfectly with what I had chosen to do as a text-based drama activity with the younger children later on 😀 Couldn’t have been better if we’d planned it!
We were running late, so did presentation time and snack together. Lots of yummy panettone slipped down very quickly while J talked about his new Murderous Maths books, L showed her sparkly heart teddy, R read her favourite poem and L’s friend K (who has Down’s Syndrome) showed us her newly acquired skill at hopping 🙂
Then we split into two groups, with J and a couple of older children looking at Julius Caesar with Helen, while I read The Gruffalo with the younger ones, then we talked through the story and thought about how each animal would be feeling at different points. I got the children to think about how a mouse moves and we each had a go, then did the same for the gruffalo and then put the two together, contrasting them at their first meeting and then at the end of the book and discussing how we could show the difference. We practised acting out different emotions and then worked in pairs taking it in turns to be gruffalo and mouse. After that I gave them a choice between drama and drawing and almost all chose drawing, so we thought about what a gruffalo is and then the children each drew and either labelled or described their own gruffalo, with pictures of what it ate around the edges – lots of mice seemed to feature here! By the time we’d got that far the older group had finished, so we never did get back to acting again. Helen wants another week, though, so we could follow on next time 😉 Meanwhile J has some Shakespeare to learn – I mustn’t forget!
A fell asleep on Big Alice while I was clearing up, so I wrapped her (wish I’d had a camera handy, as they looked great) and they stayed like that until we got to the rec and then a little longer 🙂 Lots of playing and chatting and then when we left the children asked BA to tea, so she followed us home, via supermarket for petrol (and Bob!) and kept them all busy while Bob and I got tea 🙂
Today A and I had a lazy morning, mostly catching up on washing, while Bob took the children into town to look at a dig site (I expect he’ll blog it himself) and then we all spent the afternoon pottering. J and Bob did a Famous Five jigsaw, part of a puzzle set he got for Christmas. J and K found and fitted the battery we’d finally got round to getting for K’s RC Dalek, so we’ve now all been well and truly located, annihilated and exterminated 😆
