English Language Fellow Dave Woods and the staff of the John Lewis American Corner in Libreville hold a regular Saturday-morning children’s English club called “Future Kids.” This week, the Future Kids played a game in which they rolled two dice, one with body parts and one with left/right/both cues. Based on these results, the kids indicated their own and their friends’ arms, legs, knees, ears, and so on.Activities at Future Kids are always challenging as some participants are as young as four years old. However, older children happily take on the role of helping younger ones, and over the first 30 to 60 minutes, a group competence emerges. As the kids became more comfortable with left, right, and both, Woods extended the activities from merely indicating body parts to playing games. The kids then watched a video that let them practice acting out left/right gestures, and the activity culminated in a group performance of the “Hokey Pokey” song and dance.
