It was one of precious opportunities to meet our foster children, so we also carried out some language programs at the same time.
For smaller grade children, we provided some book-readings.
Whether the book contains some moral messages is not a big matter. We want children to simulate many experiences in various stories. We want them to feel something new in a unique, unusual situation and want them to sense what characters in the story are thinking. In Cambodia folklores and legends are common as a children book, but in addition, we want to provide children with more opportunities to touch unrealistic, imaginable worlds of fantasy since they are small.
We first translate foreign books into Khmer. And we showed them to children just like a picture story show.
Some people consider that the reader doesn’t need to provide detail explanations about the story while reading. However since most of our foster children have little habit to read books, at some groups we actively asked and welcomed children’s response while reading, in order to keep their concentration and to make sure if they catch up the story.
After reading, we had some time for review and reflection.
We don’t expect that everyone can smoothly speak out what they have felt or learned from the story. Instead we asked children a simple question, such as “which character do you like (not like); why do you like (not like) that character; why do you think he did this at that time; what would you do if you were him?” Active children speak out a lot, so we made sure to ask one by one so that everyone would get a chance to think.
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