Salmon and mango salsa

Last Thursday's session went well, I think. The main cooking bit went extremely well. I emphasised at the beginning that I wanted a calm and quiet cooking session and they did brilliantly. The recipe was just the right level of complicated and looked so impressive in their plastic boxes to take home. They enjoyed the 'guess the fruit' game - pomegranet, passion fruit, lychees, papaya. My husband mischeiveously asked me afterwards if I taught them about similies in Song of Songs ;) I assured him I did not. And they enjoyed the fruit craft with cocktail sticks/umbrellas and bits of melon and kiwi cut with cookie cutters.

I was also chuffed that a few days beforehand, one of my kids came up to me in the playground to ask what they were making and when I told her, ran off to tell her little group of friends (who are also members) who listened in elated attentiveness to what we were making. I love the fact that I'm responsible for creating such excitement for them.

All that said, they were still extremely giddy after washing up. Because they finishing clearing up at different times, this means they end up in the church lounge just messing about while we wait for the slower ones. We've had an idea though! We're going to set up an activity for them to do after washing up in the hope that will keep them focused. I'm very grateful that my project mentor is a teacher. She says this is all very normal for working of kids of this age!

I'm still chewing over what will happen after this phase draws to a close. I'd love to build on but I simply don't know yet whether we have enough resource (by that I mean volunteers, interest, funding again for next year).

I'm also aware of the difficulty of assessing whether a project has worked or not. By what criteria do you decide? Also, 6 months is a very short time-frame when building trusted relationships with a lot of families you didn't know at the start.
Way too short.