I feel like I’m neglecting this blog a bit these days. I blame Facebook and Twitter – when I’ve got something short to say I put it on them, and twitters come through to my blogs side bar anyway.
Life is going OK at the moment. Tuesday youth group was a bit crazy. We only have 4 leaders, so we decided to make things easier on ourselves and just carried on the same games that the younger youth group had been doing – as they’d had a Wii night set up, and also had the two table tennis tables out. The older ones it seems weren’t as impressed, and a group of boys decided that it would be more fun to hide themselves and various Wii parts (controllers) in the corner of the hall by the soft mats. They got bored and basically decided to ruin it for those who wanted to play the games! It was a bit of a rough evening, with the mucking around resulting in there being no tuck shop open, for ANYone!
I feel the location of the youth group, limits what we can do in the autumn/winter months. We meet in the primary school, and have use of the hall and entrance/kitchen area. When it’s light outside we can use the field, which is great for giving the boys (it mainly is the boys, rather than the girls) a chance to run around and use up some energy. This time of year it’s just too dark outside between 6.30-9pm.
This week we did have some crafty type activities to do, but the mess made is crazy, and I’m not sure it was quite right for them. I’m thinking I might teach them to make friendship bracelets. When I did an American Exchange in 2003, and the Americans came over, many of the girls were into making thread bracelets/necklasses, using the method of wrapping one colour round a few times to make a patch of colour, then swapping to another thread… I’ll have to practice first myself, work out how much thread is needed for a bracelet/necklace and buy some threads. I’ve glad it’s an older group, because they should be able to manage safety pins without too much danger (as long as they are sensible) to pin the thread to their clothes – easiest way to hold the top end, so both hands free to hold and move threads. Probably find some of the boys are keen too, but any mucking around with pins and their out.
We’ve ended up using a yellow/red card system at youth club, to illustrate a result to bad behaviour. The system is the the child is given a verbal warning (ideally away from the others) and told if the behaviour continues then they will be given a “yellow card”. If they get a yellow card, they cannot buy anything from the tuck shop near the end of the evening. If after getting a yellow card, they continue with bad behaviour, they will be given a red card, which means that they will not be able to come to youth group the following week. If anyones got any thoughts on this, please let me know.