Today in the LightHouse Service, my group get to be the host! Two weeks before the actual day that the children would be coming, we already started to contact each other and form facebook groups for discussions about what we plan to do on the day itself.
For ACTIONS, We all took initiatives and planned out a list of activities and timeline for the session, with starting with icebreaker as usual, just hang around the plaza for several minutes before we all gather together. After that, we played Duck Duck Goose which the children always enjoy a lot, and the other group members in the Service produced a play called Little Red Riding Hood for approximately 10 minutes plus explanation. And in collaboration, we planned to divide into different stations, with art station, reading station, building block station and parachute (a game). As a member that is in charge, I ensured that everything is going smooth and the children are being taken care of and devoted attention to. I felt genuinely as happy as the children as I was seeing them smiling, laughing and engaging themselves in the activities that can bring them joy. My actions are worthwhile because they were able to find the happiness in life and to enjoy the moment where they no longer feel they are different because of their inabilities. To others, for examples, their teachers and also other members from the service group can observe and gain an understanding of what they like to do, what they are reluctant to participate and what they do not feel comfortable in doing.
In reflection of the LEARNING outcomes, my awareness for such groups of children with visual and hearing disability has risen as I engage with them more. I used to view them as having less ability thus I tended to put a lot more effort in repeating my sentence and taking extra care, but I gradually realized that it is best if I treat them as normal children so that they do not feel that they differ from the majority in the society. That is one area I believe I should further improve on. I improved on my planning skills because as I observe some problems with time constraint that happened to the previous groups, I came out with some ideas with how we can do it better in our own planning sessions. But I have to admit that it is challenging to calculate the exact time range that each activities take and we did not have enough time to do certain activities we planned because we did not want to interrupt the children when they are enjoying doing something. We are thinking of ways to overcome it in future sessions such as we run through the session in advance to change what we think might not work and substitute in new ideas. We showed perseverance as we always devote as much energy as we can to the children and we are willing to do this because they motivate us through their joyful expressions and engagement.
There are indeed certain times I face ethical issues in this activity. Since we only see the children once a week, we should not form too strong a bond with them because they are getting increasingly attached with us, yet we cannot promise that we are going to accompany them forever. There will always be a time where we have to seperate in the end so we should try to not let them become too emotionally dependent on us.
