Dance Club

We had a new member in dance club today! That meant that we had to re-perform our older easier routines as we did not really now what sort of level she was at. The dance moves proved to be quite difficult for her even though we thought they were quite simple so we showed her some of our other routines to perhaps let her pick one of the ones she preferred the most. And for some STRANGE reason she chose one of the difficult ones. We spent about an hour working on the first minute of the song. It was a bit tiring because of all the rapid movements I had to do repeatedly but I guess it was worth it...I think. However,we weren't exactly perfect either. We forgot some of the moves seeing as it had been a long time since we had last performed the dance move and I was quite distracted most of the time as I wasn't used on focsuing on the same parts of a song for so long :/
Other than that....I guess it was quite successful. In a way

Next week hopefully,we'll manage to do perhaps another minute and a half? :)

More Art stuff!

Our last art expedition was with the year 6's from school 7...I think. :P
This time we decided to use macaroni again but this time to make necklaces! The students had to paint their macaroni and decorate it and then attach some string or a ribbon of their choice into the macaroni then use it as a bracelet or as a necklace. Unfortunately some of them didn't have the patience to paint each piece by piece so they just sort of dipped the macaroni in the paint and this proved to make it difficult for the macaroni to dry off. :P
But we soon found a solution to that and we moved the wet macaroni onto new paper and we played pictogram while it dried. Unfortunately for some of the students, it proved difficult to put the string through as the paint was not dry on the inside and this made the string soggy and hard to make rigid. So instead they had to use ribbon. However,one or 2 of the students who painted each macaroni individually managed to make the string get through and I was actually proud for a second.
Next time,I think it would be best to tell the children EXACTLY what to do instead of assuming that they would know what would be the suitable to do. In addition to this,it would have been better to have a few back-up ideas in case something went wrong.It would also be helpful to have a prototype for the children to follow so that way they know it's possible.

The first finished bracelet :D

Art Week with the "young'uns "

Art week for the younger school children seemed like a lot of fun for them. I wish I could say the same for myself. I began to appreciate what primary school teachers have to go through everyday with children being so hyperactive :O 

I found it both fascinating and intriguing at how a majority of the children always seemed to have energy. I was drained after the first lesson! We were out into groups of four for a 1 hour and 30 mins intervals. In our group,it was Michal,Ho Geon,Ndina and myself. Michal and Ho Geon had the first 30 minutes of the lesson and taught the children how to create pretty accurate reflections of paintings by folding a paper in half and then painting one side and pressing the paper in half to create a more or less exact replica. I thought this was an appropriate activity for the occasion and the children had a lot of fun doing it as well :D
Ndina and I made an activity whereby the children were required to make a monster face with macaroni but because we were a bit short on macaroni,we decided that it would be better if the just filled in the places they wanted to fill in with the macaroni after sketching the monster on a paper.They were also asked to name their monsters which was quite fun as well :)  In addition to this,there were some communication difficulties regarding the glue. We needed liquid glue in order for the activity to be more fun but we only received glue sticks. So instead we had to substitute the liquid glue for hot glue guns. These were a bit dangerous to have with children especially those that were in year 1 :/ However,the children were quite well behaved and we had some assistance from the class teachers and it turned out pretty well. The second session went pretty well as we found some liquid glue from the school and this allowed the children to have more time gluing the macaroni even though it dried much slower than the hot glue. Having hot glue guns would have been risky as well in this case because we had children from reception. Whenever we had some time left over we would just play charades and/or pictogram :)

Overall,I found the experience quite a challenge but it taught me a lot about organisation skills and interpersonal realtions...with the kids of course. 

The sketching

Some of the final sketches

A quick game of charades :)

the final products!

My favourite! :D

More of the final products

African Charity Bazaar

This is long overdue but unfortunately I had some problems with retrieving the pictures from the event.
The bazaar was quite successful! We managed to sell 6 booklets of raffle tickets (60) which were 100 rubles each. and we also managed to sell most of our food and our products. Overall it was fun for us as well seeing as there were performances from countries like Angola,Madagascar,Russia and so many more.
We were selling Namibian artifacts like wax key chains,tea, traditional vambo dolls and cups and a few t-shirts as well. It was quite fun even though in the beginning we had troubles with finding change cos many people were paying in large amounts for small things. But that was not a big issue as we tried to convince them to just buy more stuff :P
In addition to this,it was quite difficult to serve the food as the containers were not facing us but the containers had to face the customers in order to attract them to the food. It was a bit troublesome at first but we managed either way. There were many other products to buy from all the other countries so the competition between the stalls was good as we managed to raise more money for the children :D
The draw for the raffles was pretty exciting as many people won really nice things from trips to anywhere in Africa or a night at a dacha or some really fancy coffee.
I would definitely love to do it again as I learned a lot about other countries traditional dances and foods which were extremely delicious by the way and we also managed to raise a lot of money for the children.
.The great news is that we were able to raise over 30 000 rubles for the children! I have attached a video of one of the performances from the event as well as a few pictures enjoy :)

The food that we were selling :)

African Charity Bazaar

Me and a few of my friends recently volunteered to assist our embassy at a charity bazaar that would require us to sell products from our country (Namibia) as well as model a few of our traditional dresses in order to raise money for a charity organisation.
The entire bazaar starts at around 10:00 and ends at 16:00. We are going to have our own stalls and we will be selling boerewors (sausage) ,oxtail and a few other things such as raffle tickets and 'Big Five' t-shirts. The money raised will be going towards an orphanage that specialises in helping African-Russian orphans that have been abandoned by their parents and sometimes have to suffer from discrimination in their day-to-day lives. Hopefully we will be able to raise enough money for the children.

Art!

I am not an 'arty' person. So when I was informed about the art day that was going to take place at school 7 on Tuesday,I took the opportunity to try and do something I would not usually do. A lot of the year 12s volunteered and we will have to be supervising about 20 children. I don't see much of a problem with that as the science fair proved to be quite fun and it was an interesting experience. Not to mention BIS students are normally well-behaved.
We will be making macaroni faces and perhaps pottery with macaroni as well with our group. It may turn out  quite messy but since the other ideas I had in mind were not realistic,I think this one should be okay. I plan on creating a prototype before we actually get there but that depends on whether or not I get enough time. Other than that,I shall blog as soon as I have something more to blog about :D

Basketball and Dance Club

Basketball
Our first week back after the first term was a but difficult as I was quite unfit. Mr. Gray commented that I had been doing a good job of always trying to stay open especially when someone has been cornered with the ball. However,next week,I would like to focus on my shooting skills. Last practice,I attempted to take a few shots but none of them actually went through the net. Our Teacher vs Student match this Wednesday could prove to be difficult for me as I am in a team that is FILLED with well-skilled and fast players.
I plan on practicing on my shots until then as well as working more on running from one end of the field to the other seeing as I tend to tire quite quickly.

Dance Club
Today,dance club was quite intense. We warmed up with a few house songs where we were just freestyling but it honestly tired us out. We also continued working on our routine for 'Get Busy' by Sean Paul. I realised today that it would be helpful to learn some dancehall moves that with the reggae-like tone of Sean Paul's music. These movements are often fast-paced and involve a lot of energy as they just look retarded if not enough heart is out into it :P
Next week,we will be teaching a year 7 girl on of our old routines and hopefully that will go well. I'm really looking forward to it. :)