By Jade Draper – 8 week volunteer

During my time at the Sanctuary I have been lucky enough to visit the village Nursery and help teach the young children on a few occasions. The children at the nursery are 3-5 years old and as soon as you walk through the gates you are greeted with happy smiling faces as they are always excited for their English lesson.Once we have all said ‘hello’ and ‘how are you?’ to each other the lesson begins with us singing a variety of different songs that assist the children’s learning.

One of the songs we sang was ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’. The kids especially enjoyed this song as we were dancing and using actions throughout. The kids seemed very excited to show you that they knew what the different body parts were in English. It was very cute and definitely and enjoyable experience.

When we finished singing songs we would test the Children’s knowledge of things they have already been taught such as the alphabet and different colours and objects. The children were so happy to get involved and if someone doesn’t know an answer there would always be another child that would help them. Their knowledge of English is very impressive!

At the end of one lesson, we had a fun activity for the kids were we made paper frogs. The kids coloured all of the frog parts in, some of them wanted  us to help them which is cool because who doesn’t love colouring in! We then cut the different parts out for each of the children and glued them all to a wooden stick. All of the children were super excited to have their own frog and as their parents came to collect them at the end of the day, they were all showing them off which was very funny.

I would definitely recommend experiencing the nursery when you come to the sanctuary as you will love the children, they are so funny, and you will also be impressed with their work skills! It is one of the many great opportunities to give something back to the Village during your time here.