Excurricular clubs. Knitting club week 5

Today was the last day of extra curricular knitting club for this term. Clubs were only 5 weeks this term due to TET holiday being at the end of January and the term ending to coincide with Easter break. From the 10 students who started out in the club, 9 have gone on to be relatively accomplished knitters. We haven’t managed to make as many peggy squares as I had hoped due to the short time frame, however we have a few. Perhaps completing a blanket is an incentive for me to continue with the needles. Lia and Yaya are half way through making a scarf. Next term I am offering knitting club as an option again and I hope that lots of the girls will join once more as we are knitting scarves. In the interim I need to find some simple but exciting patterns for scarves on the internet. My brother commented when I spoke to him on the phone, that my knitters looked so serious. So today, the animated knitting club photo. Clubs has been a good experience for me to try new ideas new skills and move away from ICT briefly/ I’ve never taught people on mass to knit before, or done cross stitch as in Term 1.I have also enjoyed the opportunity to get to know some of the students who come into my class for an hour, once a week.
There are many questions and lots of pros and cons, around extra-curricula clubs. Clubs are provided to get the students doing something different / extra rather than going home with the nanny and playing games or watching TV, and in the case of some clubs, doing something physical. What responsibility do the parents have? Should the school accept this role? Making use of the facilities and resources the school offers, to the “community” makes good sense. Clubs is self funding, although it could easily be turned into an economic reality. At the end of the day we are here for the children, and if we spark some child’s enthusiasm, or equip a child with a passion or a skill then clubs was successful. And at then end of the day the children do enjoy the additional activites