Today marks the first day of my journey with the disadvantaged children SAC, since I was transferred from the mental health SAC due to some complications. This is not the first time I have been in this SAC, due to last year's experience with the disadvantaged children's SAC last year, albeit not in North View Primary's Kidzark, but in Farrer Park Primary's childcare programme.
I have to admit that I felt left out at firstâ not knowing anyone else apart from Megan and Jessica, as well as never having the opportunity to go through the planning that had taken place the past few weeks. Not only that, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or what the group had already done. Nonetheless, I listened to the discussions and slowly got the hang of things. I am grateful for the welcoming and accommodating atmosphere of my group after warming up to them on the bus, as they gave me the role of Little Red Riding Hoodâs mother to play in the storytelling. I found out that we are going to be doing storytelling of fairytales and folk tales to the children, in addition to playing games related to the story-related theme of the week. I think that this is an interesting idea that not only will captivate the children, and take them back to the more carefree and imaginative years of their early childhood, but also teach them important life lessons such as teamwork and creativity through the activities planned. This proved to be a success once we reached the school.
The school was foreign to me initially, due to the fact that I was the only one who had never been there before, as the rest had already had one session the week before. Thankfully, the team showed me around, and I was very impressed by the prepared scripts and intricate props that Jessica made. During the storytelling, the children were relatively attentive, being an extremely reactive audience, laughing at the the right times. This really boosted our self-esteems and helped us to shamelessly act out our parts, just to see their happiness. This later proved to be a subtly negative point, causing some complaints from upper primary classes, and we had to constantly remind the children to keep their voices down. I felt that this was quite difficult to do, as they were extremely hyperactive and excited. However, with the teachers' help, we managed to successfully calm them down enough to play the games, which included Squirrel, What Time Is It Mr Wolf?, and Splat.
Eventually, we had to swap groups with the indoor group, and thus had a new bunch of children. Due to the noise disturbances we were creating, we moved to the basketball court for the storytelling and games for this group. This was the group of older children, and I really felt the excitement and enthusiasm from them, though they were still obedient and attentive to us. We had a quiz session after the storytelling, and I realised just how competitive we all are, especially evident from a young age. During the games, the kids were really sticky to some of us, and I got a group hug from some of them, which was very heartwarming to see that we were starting to influence them a little.
At the end of the day, the exhaustion and shameless acts to make the children happy were all worth it. I found the same enjoyment in helping the kids as I did last year, which was both nostalgic and refreshing. It was a good start to a hopeful year of SAC, and thus far begins my journey with the disadvantaged children SAC.