IEP 07 First Class!

Happy New Year Kak Da and everyone!!

18 kids and 6 volunteers were at Rumah Ilham yesterday evening for IEP's first 2007 class! We have about 5 or 6 new kids in the programme. All so tiny :) Hafiz 'kecik' has his brother Hakim (also 'kecik' :)) with him this year.

I got there a bit late after dropping by Jasema to get some art blocks and sweets. When I arrived, Abang Acat has started off the first part of the activity - "Know your friend!"... Each of the kids were given a piece of paper to write down their names and birth dates. Then they had to fold the pieces of papers and put them into a box. They then randomly picked out a piece each and had to do the following:

1. go to the front and read out the name on the paper and the person's birthday
2. get to know who the person is
3. plot the person's name and birthday on the board

After everyone has gone to the front and called out their friend's name, they were given a piece of artblock, some crayons and magic pens to transfer the drawing on the board onto the art block as creative as they can...

It got a bit exciting when we announced that the first 3 submissions will win prizes!! And the top 3 winners were:

1. Hafiz 'Kecik'

2. Fazreen (new)

3. Syed 'Macha'

We also gave out another 3 prizes for the most creative work and the winners were:

1. Azwan 'Boboy'

2. Royhan 'Roy'

3. Asyraf (new)

At the end, everyone got some sweets because they were all very well-behaved during class as well as being helpful towards one another during the 'birthday test' :)

We wrapped up the session with laying out 2007's ground rules, which are:

1. Speak English as much as possible (be it queen's english or broken english)
2. Listen and pay attention when someone is speaking
3. Raise hand to answer questions

We also told them that classes will be held on a fortnightly basis so that they will have time to prepare for homework given (if any) :) Also, Ilham now has wireless access (how cool is that huh?!) so Acat took the liberty to get connected and told the kids about this blog (the IEP Blog) and that all their activities can be read from here. He emphasized to the kids that the whole world will be able to view what they do during classes :)

Better start behaving now ya kids!!