Gap Year Students
Group 1: Isaac, Emma, Fiona, Nathi
The Umthombo centre got off to a slow start today. At 9am, when the first programme is meant to begin, kids were still asleep and breakfast had not yet been prepared. Things took a while to get going.
When the morning session did get underway it was for the most part a successful one. We helped out a few individual kids with the mathematics worksheets they had been given. Some of the children we supported got on very well and really understood their work. However the child Isaac was working with was not only younger but quite far behind. In short, he could count but didn't really understand numbers and had never been taught the symbols for the numbers so obviously putting a multiplying and dividing worksheet in front of him was not useful for anyone. Isaac eventually managed to teach him how to write the numbers 1 and 2 although it took some effort as the boy was quite intimidated by this alien concept.
We planned to run our own drama programme for the second half of the morning but the maths programme was very late starting and took the slot of ours. We were disappointed not to have the chance to do something useful and get to know the kids more. The rest of the morning we had a chat to some of the staff and discussed the progression of this placement. We've seen so much here that we could offer a lot of help to. We came to the conclusion that we should be in Umthombo once a week for a regular programme that we would run ourselves and volunteer elsewhere for the rest of the week. We are still sorting out the specifics of our next placements, however there are a lot of opportunities to look into.
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