As the service leader of the Temple School service group which primarily focuses on helping less fortunate children from the local Temple School in Thalawathugoda to help teach children aged 3-5 learn English.

This year, I decided to change the goals of our service. Instead of only focusing on improving only the English knowledge of the children, I decided to organize activities that will help them to interact with each other and give them an opportunity to experience what it’s like to be in an international environment  that they wouldn’t be able to experience in their school due to the lack of resources. 

To make this project a success I….

1. Focused on the learning, creativity and activity aspect of the children which will help them develop in each of these areas. 
2. I then came up with activities related to each of the areas mentioned above and discussed and came to an agreement with the other service members on which of these ideas would work.
3. Made a semester plan for service and blocked each activity that we were going to do on each of our service blocks.
4. Spoke to all the service members about their responsibilities. This year, I didn’t want to be the only leader, I asked everyone to pick an activity that I had planned and they like to do and mentioned to all the service members that I want them to be leaders of our service group so I put some of them in charge of planning and initiating some of the activities.

The activités I organized are….

1. One afternoon, I booked the art room and along with the other service members I taught the children to paint with wate- colors, how to mix the colors to get new colors, stencil art and we let them take their artwork home and they were very happy about it- focused on creativity

   

   
2. Another day, we took them to our school library and read English books to them about animals which helped them learn to identify the animals in English and learn about different colours- focused on learning

   

   

3. I planned an activity to ice cupcakes with the children. My initial plan was to make the batter and bake the cupcakes with the kids but then I realised that I we wouldn’t have enough time to do this so I was able to bake enough cupcakes for the kids to have and bring them to school on the day of the activity. I then along with the other service members  used our school Makerspace icing utensils to ice and decorate the cupcakes with the kids. We taught them how to do it and gave them the freedom to ice it however they wanted to- focused on creativity
4. I organized a day out to the zoo with a kids on a Saturday. I had to organize transport to take the children to the Dehiwala zoo here in Sri Lanka, collect enough money to purchase entrance tickets at the zoo and get a snack for the kids to have. We were able to help the children identify the animals they’d learnt about with us, which I think helped them to remember the names of the  animals more after seeing them in real life-focused on learning

   

   

5. One after I booked the school gym and took the kids with the service members and we were able to teach the kids to do a relay-focused on activity

   

   

6. Another big project that I was able to organize was a Toy and Stationery drive. I wanted our school community to be part of our service group in some way so I decided to organize a toy and stationery drive with the other service members to collect old and new toys and stationary to give to the children for Christmas and our service group was able to collect toys and stationery enough to give the kids for christmas. 

   

   

   Poster created for the drive
   Photo credits: Anouk Samarasinghe