My name is Andrew. I’m in the red team. Today was my first full day in this camp. It was amazing. Every second of this day was full of fun.
In the morning, after warm up we had different activities: sport, group time, workshop and English lesson. Everywhere was very interesting to do different things. On group time we chose the name of our team, and most of us decided, that “Red Rats” would be nice. After all activities we had nap time, where I watched film in English. Then we had “Stations at option”, where I played in different table games with native speakers also in English language.
After all, teams played the game “Name the tune”, and I think that “Red Rats” were the best, because we got a lot of points and didn’t make any mistakes. We danced a lot there. Later we had a snack and went to sleep. That’s how this awesome day ended. 
Andrey Arseniuk, 15 y.o., Moscow
РУБРИКА ПЕДАГОГА
Hello everyone! My name is Alena, for this summer I am in the position of head counselor. MMC is a special place for me, it is like a home far from home, because this is my fourth year here and I have found a lot of really good friends at MMC. It has a special atmosphere and it is difficult to explain but I feel comfortable when I am here. I used to be a participant once, it was a wonderful time, then I understood that I would like to be a part of the Center. So I was an intern, I tried really hard and afterwards I became a counselor, I really enjoyed it and I spent a lot of sessions here: English plus program for the whole summer, autumn, winter and spring sessions. I realized that I really enjoyed this job and it is not because of money, it is because of the feelings and emotions I have towards this place and of course because of kid`s feedback.
This session is really special for me because also I am a counselor of the first team. In our team we will have helpers. For the first days we will check their abilities and they will decide if they want to be helpers. So now they are important part of our plot, because they will participate in preparation of evening events, they will also lead radio. For all of them it is the new and really important experience. The main thing that they have is readiness to work and to create something new. Of course we will help them during the session.
We spend the whole day with children, it helps to create a comfortable and supportive atmosphere in every team. As for the kids we are like guardians: we are responsible for their health and well-being. One more important thing is leading Group –times (GT). During this time we pay attention to teambuilding, because we are here together for three weeks so every kid should feel that their team is like their family. Also we keep in mind that the main idea of our program is to make children feel comfortable to speak foreign language, so the of course the rule of group-time – always try to speak English. Children know that we have our volunteers here, our foreign friends, so kids understand that their foreign counselors want to be a part of their camp life. GT is like a hidden lesson because kids discuss different questions, play games using English language. It helps them to learn new words and expressions; they develop their communicative skills, break language barriers and practice speaking. It is very important to show them that learning English is very interesting and enthralling.
Today we had a first full day with our usual activities: sport, English, workshop, squad times. The theme of the day was family and friends, so during group-times we made sure that this theme was involved in the activities, children watched different, useful videos according to the theme, they spoke about their families and so on. Tonight we had our first evening game “Tower game”, the game is known as name the tune. We tried to guess different melodies, also we danced a lot and had a lot of fun.
I believe that we help children to be more open, to communicate with each other, to share their opinions. We are here to help them so I hope that is what we do, and I hope we do it in the right way.
Alena Golubeva, Coach of the Red squad