This service-learning project was a very
satisfying and fun experience. Getting
to teach early elementary school students about what we have learned about
fairy tales was a great experience. I learned a lot from this opportunity by
seeing the fairy tales from the eyes of a young child. By teaching these
children, I was able to understand how a younger child would interpret the
Grimm fairy tales. As a child, I was only familiar with the Disney versions of
these fairy tales and I had not read most of the actual Grimm fairy tales until
this year, as a college student. I had already learned a lot in class, but I
was unable to see how a child would understand the tale. The tales we chose to
teach the children were meant to be read to children. I think it is important
to fully realize how children can interpret these tales. For example, the
“Golden Key” leaves the ending up for the reader to decide. As a college
student, I would have appreciated actually reading an entire tale, rather than
coming up with my own. However, the children at the Boys and Girls club were
thrilled to come up with their own fairy tales. They could not have been more
excited to make up a story on their own.
This
project was much better than a final exam. I liked that it allowed for some
creativity in what we could choose to do with the children. It was also very
hands-on, which was great. Rather than reiterating the same thoughts and
interpretations that we’ve been talking about all semester, this gave us an
opportunity to apply our knowledge in a real-world setting. This project was
probably a bit more challenging, since we not only had to know about the tales,
but we had to adapt our knowledge to communicate an abridged, but still
educational lesson. It was harder to decide what was appropriate and would be
interesting to children that young, and also teach them something new. This
project really required us to apply the information we’ve learned in a whole
new format, which was challenging and fun.
This
project did have some difficulties, though. One of the main issues our group
encountered was the size of the group of children. It varied quite a bit, and
sometimes the groups simply were not divided up evenly. The first week, we had
five children, which was a great size. The second week, we had ten followed by
three the next week. That same week the other group had eight children, making
the groups very uneven. The last week we had five children, which was once again
very good. While the Boys and Girls club cannot control how many children show
up on any given day, the different sizes of the groups was difficult to plan
for. In retrospect, it would have been better for us to have planned activities
for large groups and small groups. Some of our activities were easily adapted,
like the play we had them act out for Hansel and Gretel. We only had to make up
roles on the spot when we had a large group of children. However, our jumping
jacks activity the next week would have worked much better with a larger number
of children, and we had to cut it short. We discovered that it was better to
over-plan, than to hope that our activities took the time we thought they
would. When we had more activities than necessary, then we could always skip
something if one activity did not pan out.
Another
difficulty was behavioral problems. For the most part, the Boys and Girls club
staff would be there to help if a child was not cooperating. It was still
difficult for us to make the children focus sometimes. This definitely could
have been fixed in retrospect by planning more active activities. As tired
college students, I think it was easy for us to want them to do quieter
activities, like draw. However, the children often had more fun when they could
get up and do something, even if it were as simple as acting out “Hansel and
Gretel”. As for motivating them to stay on task, we used candy as bribes. It
was a fairly effective way of getting the children to listen to us, because we
could threaten not to give them candy at the end.
The
only advice I would have for future service-learning project students is to
really focus on planning more activities than you would think you need. It is
hard to budget time with these activities, because some take a lot longer than
others. Also, because the children were not the same each week, it is difficult
to know ahead what they will like. Some groups loved to draw and some groups
loved to get up to do activities. Therefore, it is important that you have a
detailed, varied plan before you go, and that you plan one extra activity than
you’ll think you need. Then, you will not be caught off guard when you run out
of things to do with the children.
I
think if I were to do this project again, I would definitely plan more, from a
preparation stand point. As was already
stated, plans were crucial to being successful. Even with good plans, one
cannot predict how the time will go, which is why it’s important to have more
activities than necessary. However, on the project overall, it would be nice to
have larger groups of children. Perhaps by splitting up the groups over a
longer period of time would be more beneficial, because the groups would be a
bit larger and therefore a bit easier to work with.
Overall,
this project has been beneficial in my opinion. It was definitely fun, but also
educational for me. I learned a lot more about children and got to see the
material from their perspective. It was challenging to make sure everything was
age appropriate while still being interesting. Working in a group made the
project easier because you could work together to come up with really creative
ideas. The group could then get to interact more closely with the students
because there were four of us, and we could split our time between the
children. That individual time is when I learned the most about their different
ideas and opinions about the fairy tales. This is where I learned the most
throughout this project. The project was a great experience and I would gladly
do it again.
