2. Get to know the children attending the ASP by assessing the level of each child in their learning and development. Develop an assessment form with skills and knowledge needed for each level. Examples of forms can be found online or made in cooperation with the local school. An example of an assessment tool that can be used in Romania is being developed.
3. Divide the students into groups according to their learning/development level: a group of children who can do their homework by themselves or with a little support and a group of children needing full support to do their homework.
4. Focus on arousing the curiosity and interest of each child for learning and exploring. (motivation) Learning should include having fun.
Ways to do this might be:
• Using Davar activities http://davar-education.eu/about-us/
• Exposing children to diverse stimuli, to use all senses.
• Talking with them after a common experience (Circle talk after a walk or a story or activity).
• Creating a library of books, where students can read, or just look at books, in their free time.
Possible activities to include in an ASP :
1. Teach and Model healthy routines
• Develop and model a certain routine in the ASP during the whole year. For example: start each meeting with a song and a prayer; followed by a game. Then a short discussion about weather, day, month, season of the year, followed by (home)work time; if time allows have motor skills activity/ science activity and continue with free activities. End with prayer.
• Each semester, organize a Field Trip for a day or half a day.
• Serve community activities (for example, every first Wednesday of the month or any day it suits: clean the ditches of the village, the market or a public garden; help or visit poor/old people),
• Once a year offer them a week of holiday outside their village. (can be out in tents)
2. Teach and Model healthy hobbies
• Make sure the children can play outdoor games, which they can play after the end of your program. Organize competitions between them (play soccer, basketball, volley, badminton, table tennis, etc).
• Encourage them to collect small natural items that can be used later in craft activities, like sticks, seeds, roots, stones or bottle caps.
• Teach children how to play musical instruments, like drum, flute, guitar, keyboard or bells. The most motivated children can get the instrument as a present, while the others can use it, just during the class course (or the most motivated children can buy it, at the ASP store, see more at point 3).
• Pick different wild berries and mushrooms as a group activity and cook them together;
• Model and encourage creativity with cloth and yarn: provide yarn or pieces of clothing/cloth that they can use at home to knit or weave with.
• Teach how to make musical instruments with materials from nature and use them at a special feast. For instance, they can make their own blowing instruments (singing straws, water pipe trombone) or their own drum or spin drums with different metal bowls, immersed upside down in a container filled with water, or just by providing a metal container that will hit it with a wooden stick. A xylophone can be made with glasses or glass bottles filled with water at different levels.
3. Teach and Model how to handle money
• Let children earn ‘money’: use rewards with local printed money, to be used just inside your ASP.( make photocopies of the real banknotes on a single side, while the other side is blank and you stamp it with your Organization's stamp or church stamp. Reward children for punctuality, perseverance, progress, responsibility, diligence, creativity and any good work.
• Let children invest the local ‘money’ they receive from rewards: they can deposit it for a chosen period and in that way, they get a percentage more at the appointed time.
• At the end of each school semester open your own shop with products that the children can ‘buy’ with the local money. The one with the most money can be the first customer, and so on. Ideas for products: soap, food items, clothes etc.
4. Teach and model how to discipline themselves, to become punctual and responsible in school, at home and also at the ASP; by following the example of the ASP leaders.
5. Teach and model how to solve different life challenges
• For instance, teach how to use basic tools to develop skills: hammering a nail, cracking nuts with a hammer/stone or a nut cracker, cutting branches with a saw (as they grow in age), sewing on buttons, different ways of decorating by sewing,cooking bread, pies and basic local food, washing clothes,
• what number to call in an emergency (112 – for police, fire brigade or ambulance), where to go if they need social support (social department of the town hall or whatever is applicable).
6. Teach and model how to lose and keep going on through the outside sport games and indoor games played during the after-school program or during the extended activities of after-school program.
7. Teach and model how to live as a believer in God:
• Tell them stories and instructions from the word of God and explain what it means to be saved by the grace of God and belong to Him.
• Be an example of what you teach, for instance each time when you do something wrong, humble yourself and ask for forgiveness. Do not create a false image of a perfect believer; we are not perfect, but we are humble, and we can repent if we do something wrong.
• Mention as often as possible that God created us to be diligent and creative at the same time; it is good to rest and have fun, but life is tough, and we must like working and look for work. Children can work by studying at school and helping their families at home. For instance help with house cleaning, take care of younger siblings, doing errands like buying food, picking fruits or vegetables.
• We have to change the false image of life, that the media are trying hard to enslave us with and should remember that as believers, we do not belong to this world. We have to focus more on what God’s word says than on what this society and mass media are saying.
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