Board games as the way of therapy

Have you ever thought about games as a way to recharge your batteries 🪫? Of course, there’s another bad thing about playing games - addiction. Thus you have to be really careful when you choose what to play and how long it might take. Our friend, a VSPP, Alana Underwood prepared two speaking activities for our youth which help everyone relax and get to know each other better. While we’re rolling the dice we could cover different essential topics to discuss - family and friends; books and tv shows; education and school; travel etc. All students were excited to see the answers and shared some memorable moments with each other.

They are so sweet and kind. Love working with them.

Music to my ears

Is there anything similar between reading 📖 and music 🎶? How these activities affect your mental and physical well being? Our meeting with an American VSPP, Alana Underwood, helped youth from Kherson and Mariupol regions find lots of benefits of these pastimes. After the discussion, Alana being a therapist and physiologist in Texas, decided to insert some exercises to help everyone feel calm and less stressed. So we did some breathing exercises for a while and shared some other ways to feel relaxed. After the meeting all participants got some useful expressions related to the topic and chatted on our Telegram Group with each other.

What's the point of reading?

That’s been the third time when active youth from Mariupol and Kherson joined the English Speaking Practice with our 🇺🇸friend, a VSPP Alana Underwood. This time our topic was related to reading and how it affects our mood and live in general. We’re really excited to hear that all participants who joined yesterday, are crazy about reading 📖 📚. They showed us their books and shared the plots of their favorite ones. We had some people who were reading the same book at the same time - they have definitely lots in common. After some speaking part, Alana shared some positive impacts of books and we discussed them together. They were also given some homework 📄 in the chats on Telegram and WhatsApp - to find more positive aspects of reading and how books make people feel. It would be really interesting to read their comments and get a feedback from Alana. Thank you @peacecorpsukraine for giving us a chance to improve our knowledge and achieve new skills.

UNO: What is it exactly?

The United Nations Organization (UNO) is known for bringing countries together to promote peace and cooperation. It was set up after World War II on October 24. Since that time, this holiday is observed annually, where members get together to discuss global issues and work out solutions. The UNO encourages countries not to give up when they ran into obstacles. 

Thus we came together on the English Practice and talked about different organizations who support the world and global issues, we looked through some advantages and disadvantages, we read an article to find out more details about their mission and learned some common phrasal verbs according to the text.

 

Setting Goals

Another great meeting for Youth of Kherson and Mariupol cities was yesterday where we all gathered to improve our English. At the beginning the participants were asked some questions from our friend, a VSPP, Alana Underwood about their weekend and exciting things about Ukraine. After that discussion she presented different speaking activities and exercises to help students understand how to set goals and achieve them. Our participants did enjoyed the activity “Goal Worksheet for 1 year” because they could set an attainable, think about steps to get it and barriers that might happen and how to work with them.

They all got a homework activity, which required to consider their future plans and what they want to be/have/see in 1 year, 5 years and 10 years.