Hi everyone! My name is Mark, I want to tell you about the first full day in this camp.
This year we are in the superheroes academy, where we’re trying to save the universe. Our day started with morning warmup. Then we had squad time, where we celebrate birthday of our teammate Rita.
During sport we were in the swimming pool, it was exciting. Then we had squad time, we’ve discussed name of our squad. So now we call ourselves “Radiance”. During workshop we made our safes. I finished it during stations at option. After we had English lesson with Mika, where we did interesting tasks. During nap time we started watching a movie, about Ill but smart girl.
During next squad time we had a task in small groups. We had to prepare short performances where we should introduce ourselves.
In the evening we had “Tower game”. We had to guess popular melodies. Also we had to dance all together. I like dancing so for me and for our team it wasn’t difficult. The game was outdoors for the fist time, I really liked it. Our team guessed all the melodies so we hope to win!
It is my 5th time in this camp, I really like it and I’m thinking of being a counselor in future.
Mark Gnedin, 17 y.o., Kostroma
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
