School Activities

Although last time I wrote about how much the very small children are supposed to know here, it would be pretty far from to truth to say that at Emmanuel School everything is just about learning. Dealing with the students as whole persons who for example also need to have fun time, have common activities, or experience spirituality is just as important objective of the school as providing knowledge. The school`s motto is nothing else, but `Integrity, Knowledge and Power`, in which I think `integrity` refers perfectly to this concept: the goal of treating a child as a whole person with all different kinds of needs, not just somebody who is here to be taught.

As I see this objective is represented in a lot of ways: in the forms of the assemblies every morning (where they sing together the national and a school anthem), the worshiping every Wednesday morning (which also includes a lot of singing here) and the form of the school activities every Friday. These include various fun activities that the children can all enjoy together. One Friday for example they had a competition of filling up bottles with water that they had to carry in their hand, and also eating apple that was tied up over their head. Another day it was poetry recital, then next week we had  spelling competition. Although the smallest children are not always part of these afternoon activities, but sometimes we also have separate activities for the children in nursery and kindergarten. Last Friday for example we also had a competition, where they had to fill bottles with different colours of water, during which besides having fun (they really enjoyed it!) they also had an opportunity to practice the names of the colours.

This Friday our school activity was a lot fun, too: the members of the French club performed a play in French, where they presented the news of Emmanuel School for the first week of the reopening. We had two people presenting the news and also some reporters who `went to the field` and took interviews with some of the teachers and students (who were of course also all acted by students). They asked the administrator for example about how he felt about the reopening, they asked some new students about why they came to this school, then they asked the pastor who came for worship on the first week about why is it important to worship at school. Even I was the part of the play: I was asked about my opinion about the school and supposedly I said that that I love it here a lot and I like all the people at the school, too (which is very true! :)). They even had a guy who was acting the cameraman, filming the news! It was really a fun activity that the audience (meaning the other children and the teachers (enjoyed a lot, too).

Here you can watch the whole video of the sketch as well, so feel free to click on the video bellow: :)

Again another week we had a program like this: we had a quiz show which included all kinds of questions starting from English grammer and later continuing with general knowledge about Ghana's history and also some questions concerning current changes in the government and including the names of the new ministers. All classes starting from class five were represented by two people whom the questions were asked. In the case they couldn't give a correct answer withing a ceratin time, the question was passed to the next pass as a bonus question. Just like at every school activity all the other kids were present as an audience so that they could cheer for their class and also learn from the competition.
You can also watch the videos of the qiuz show under the following links: (For me the most interesting part was part 3, since that's the one which is about the history of Ghana.)


Quiz Show Part 1
Quiz Show Part 2
Quiz Show Part 3
Quiz Show Part 4