Here is a link to our EFM student’s update. Valya created a little newspaper to send to some of her friends telling a little bit of what has happened during the school. Feel free to read and enjoy!

EFM Newspaper

We enjoy laughing in class, everyone should be able to laugh while they learn.

Valya (our EFM student) and I enjoy having fun in class. I often employ the use of games to help in teaching. One such game I use is called Mad Chatter (I think, I forgot). Basically you get a word, you have to describe the word, and the other person/team has to guess the word.

We played this game recently and Valya was the one describing words for me. The theme was “Rooms.”

“A place where there are pots and pans and you cook in this room” Kitchen

“A place where you sleep” Bedroom

“The place where you rest and take it easy” ??? “When you come home after a long day and you just want to relax in this room” ???

I was at a lost at this point. She finally had to show the word to me. Restroom! Of course! I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Once she discovered that this was another word for bathroom she thought it was pretty funny too. I proceeded to tell her of a few other names for the place in which we rest. The John, the watercloset, Mrs. Murphy, lavatory, ladies room, the facilities, potty… the list could go on. Why do we have so many names for such a small rather dirty room? Just another fun moment in the life of English for Missions!

Here is a fun video from our evening English for Missions class!
Students are acting out “the body” trying to accomplish a task. This is what happens when there is no unity in the body…

Here is a short video clip of Baba Halya reciting some childhood poems from memory. My coworker Allison lives with her and recorded her recitation. This is a great glimpse of Ukrainian culture! Every child is taught poems in school, the same ones their parents learned which are the same ones their parents learned!

Once upon a time, I had the fun privilege of visiting an after school/work tutoring program that runs in the center of the city. A strong king invites people to come and pay to be part of a class for extra English lessons. This is open to kids, fairies, and adults a like! I have been in contact with one teacher and a shepherdess who has asked me a couple of times to come and be a part of her class. My most recent visit involved me and a talking shoe to take part in one of their teacher seminars and afterwards teaching a short lesson in a classroom in a cave.

Speaking to teachers (not in a cave)

I like to use a fun little game called Once Upon a Time when I teach. This is a game that is all about storytelling as you may have gathered. Stories usually sound like the one above, just complete nonsense. (The previous story is true if you take out the randomness.)

Making a storyline

Students have fun learning to create a story based on cards that they drew from a deck. The objective of the game is to weave a tale using storytelling cards you pulled from a deck to arrive at a predetermined ending. These can range from a wide variety of cards, you can have words like strong or weak, king or queen, forest or castle, fairy or giant, ruins or broken… the list goes on. The ending of the story is also chosen from a deck of possible endings. You can have the classic, ‘and the lived happily ever after,’ or ‘the evildoers were thrown into a well and never heard of again,’ or perhaps ‘and he picked up his weapon and went on his way.’ There are many options but you can only arrive at one ending!

Sharing the rough draft

My time at the tutoring program was fun. Students created stories that had magical changing forests, armies of devils, and sleeping beauties. They were very creative and ready to share. I look forward to being able to come and partner with this program in the future!

Working hard on stories