Hello! I'm Sergei. I've worked as an Au Pair in USA for two years with two families, kids ages around 4-10(boys and girls). I absolutely love taking care of kids, I'm patient, understanding, responsible, reliable and attentive to details. Both families had dogs/a puppy + a cat, chickens and bunnies. My responsibilities included doing dishes, cleaning up around living and playing room, taking to and picking up the kids from school and activities, helping them with homework, making them breakfasts and lunches, taking care of the pets, or making sure the kids do all of that.
Previously I've worked as a Summer Camp Counselor, an English tutor and a babysitter.
Counseling has taught me to cope with a large group of children and always keep my awareness sharp, find ways to attract and keep their attention, to be a good leader for them. I also got very good at managing their time — either during certain activities, or during the whole day — and coming up with different games on the spot for our downtime. Your kids are never going to get bored when I'm around!
A very valuable skill I developed tutoring the English language is to explain something complex in a simple and personalized way. I'll always come up with something that your kids would be able to relate to, therefore understand and remember the subject more efficiently. Also, now it's much easier for me to keep kids interested in one activity for a long time, have them listening to me and respecting my point of view. I find teaching kids (and babysitting too, for that matter) very rewarding as it is very satisfying to see the growth and development of students and kids in general.
As a babysitter, I've learnt a lot about how to be patient with kids, how to be compassionate and share their interests. I will have a blast watching movies and cartoons, and play with toys with your children. During school and university I have played basketball in our republic’s team (I still play it at least three times a week with friends, plus some volleyball and soccer), and I have graduated from an art school — so I am very good at teaching children sports, drawing, sculpture and other applied arts.
On my last job of babysitting my friend’s three-year-old kid, I enjoyed seeing the progress in his reading and writing skills as we practiced. In downtime we watched cartoons and YouTube videos, and played outside. I taught him to draw his favorite cartoon characters and sometimes we made stickers, pins or charms out of those drawings. We also loved to try some of those ‘home experiments’ from kids science books which are a hugely educational and entertaining for kids. I drove him responsibly and cooked lunch every now and then, when his parents had no time for it.
Apart from my job experience, here are some of my skills I'd like to briefly mention: I have a constant 6+ years driving experience, a major in linguistics and translation (English and German, also I know a little bit of Portuguese), computer proficiency (I've been working in an IT company for almost two years, have basic knowledge of HTML, C#, Java; expert in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Premiere). I'm responsible, highly adaptable and a quick learner.
Kids seem to like me because of my friendliness, openness and sense of humor. However, I know when to be strict to maintain control over certain situations and to stay authoritative. I can assure you that I will become a best friend, a good mentor and a reliable babysitter for your children.