Spring Break: English Speaking Countries Camp in Izum

My spring break was the last week of April, so I'm still lagging a little behind on my blog posts. I spent a few days in the nearby town of Izum, where my PCV friends Danny and Shannon organized a mini-camp for their students. Izum is the second-largest town in Kharkiv Oblast (after Kharkiv) and they are known for their raisins! The word Izum in Russian means raisin, but I'm not sure if the town was named after raisins or vice versa.

The PCVs with Shannon's counterpart.

The theme of the camp was English Speaking Countries so we had quite a few interesting country studies lessons. Shannon taught about Australia, Kenny taught about South Africa, Erika taught about Belize, Sam taught about Jamaica, Danny taught about Ireland.

Kenny with his team.

Erika showing different exotic animals from Belize.

Sam showing Jamaican food.

Shannon playing Australian Jeopardy.

Danny's rendition of the east coast of the United States is possibly the best free-hand drawing of a map I've ever seen!

I taught a lesson about India including a Fact File, traditional foods, traditional clothing, and some popular monuments like the Taj Mahal. We also tried to do a little bit of yoga but ended up only doing standing poses because the kids didn't want to sit on the floor :) Here are a few highlights with my team of 7th and 8th grade students.

I had my team design their own henna hand drawings.

Our team's henna hand poster!

this is how we can we portray the Taj Majal.

and a peacock looks like this...

tree pose!

gliding from Warrior 3 haha

me and Team India!

We also had an egg-drop challenge, where each team was given an hour to construct something to protect an egg from breaking. All the teams had the same materials: newspaper, plastic forks, drinking straws and scotch tape. Shannon dropped the eggs from different heights outside on the playground, and the winner was the team whose egg dropped from the tallest height before breaking.

my team building their egg contraption.

ours looked like a mini hot air balloon.

Kenny's team made something like a helicopter.

Shannon dropping the bowl-like thing that Danny's team made.

Erika's girls made a box which worked pretty well.

At the end of the camp, each team prepared a presentation about their country. It was interesting to see how much the kids learned from their team leader. Each team also colored a number of individual squares, and then we glued them together to form a patchwork World Map.

This is where South Africa is...

Showing off the Eurasia continent!

I n d I A !

Danny with Team Ireland

Erika and her team

Shannon being some sort of Australian animal haha

Sam sang Bob Marley's "One Love" with his team :)

After the camp, we hung out outside and enjoyed the spring sunshine. Erika and I walked around the town a little bit while the other volunteers played soccer with a bunch of neighborhood kids. Here are the photos from our Ukrainian-style photo session :D