The new look Croston House Children's Home is taking shape as building is well underway. All this is possible using the generous contributions towards Glenn's outrageous battles against the elements as he walked across Thailand.

Feel free to visit his website at:
www.crostonhousechildrenshomethailand.org/

Have a look at the building site that will soon be called home.

View the Croston House Children's Home slideshow below:

English Camp May 2009

Around Thailand there are many children’s homes looking after children less fortunate than ourselves Even though these children come from disadvantaged backgrounds some have shown an amazing liking for English.

In May 2009, I was fortunate enough to go back to visit Glenn Croston at his children’s home in Lamphun, with a view to conducting some sort of English camp with his Prathom kids. 

There are about 27 children at the home and due to the fact that we only had a couple of days before my own children went back to school, we didn’t have much time to plan and do the whole thing.

The English camp was to last for one day and have some kind of film show in the evening, so I had to find enough activities to last for the day. In planning, I made sure that we had more than enough activities as it was difficult to gauge how long to spend on each activity as I didn’t know the level of English (although I had a good idea) and the children were of mixed age from Prathom 1-6.

I was going to take my children with me to help explain the activities. In my opinion, most difficulties in making students take part in any form of activity, is to get them to understand what is expected of them. I hoped that my children would be my “not so secret weapon.”

In the morning we started our activities which were a mixture of running around, talking, drawing, reading, writing and colouring. Throughout the day my children, Sam and Chelsea relayed my instructions and monitored the children’s progress, allowing me to wander around to everyone, asking them questions and answering theirs. I found the colouring particularly difficult (as I am colour blind).

The children worked in groups and we even had a teacher from their local school (a foreigner) that helped out with one of the groups. Nobody was left on their own, all working in their groups and all asking questions when they needed further clarification.

After lunch it was getting particularly hot; however, they didn’t flinch and carried on until we managed to finish most of the activities. As promised, after the evening meal, I showed some films. One was a cartoon of Little Bear and another was a DVD of my children involved in basic conversational English. This was projected onto a wall using a projector.

Some of the children, especially the very young ones, showed an amazing attention to detail and were first to answer questions concerning the alphabet and vocabulary shown on the flashcards I had brought with me.

The writing that was completed by some was so neat, it put me to shame. The same could be said for the colouring activities, where some of the children took so much care with their work, it made me wonder what type of student they were when they attended their normal school.

I am looking forward to going back again sometime, as not only did the children have a good time, but also Sam and Chelsea. Sam even commented to me that he liked the responsibility of helping out and thought it was great they did exactly what he told them to do. Maybe he will listen to his teacher more when we get back to Udon Thani.