third term

And we’re back in school for the third term. I was expecting complete chaos for Monday morning as the kids have been out for two weeks and have probably forgotten what they are supposed to do in school. As well as the fact that the NC group had been working at the school—moving things around, painting the walls with numbers, letters and sayings, we had shapes put on the floor in the semi-circle that we use for group time. My room looks great! There were some teachers in that group and they moved my centers around some and I think they work much better now.

The shapes on the floor are used so that hopefully the kids will stop sitting right on top of each other. They don’t understand (or refuse to listen) when I tell them to move over, to not touch their neighbor, etc so now they pick out a foam shape and match it to the one painted on the floor and put their mat down on top of it. they were very quick to pick up on choosing shapes that are next to each other to sit by their friends…the only problem is that sometimes kid A wants to sit next to kid B who doesn’t feel the same way and the shape swapping takes ages. Then I pick them up one by one and have them tell me what the color and shape is…red diamond, square blue (reminder to put the color first), yellow rectangle, green circle (and all the variations there of)

Wednesday we had a volunteer from the hospital come to talk about burn safety. Most of the burn victims that they get in the hospital are children who have gotten too close to the cooking fires and so they are trying to start the education early about staying away from fires. Tracey came in with a coloring book about Precious and Manny who were out collecting firewood for the cooking fire and who meet Luca the magic rabbit who talks to them about fire safety. Only parents should touch fire. You should build a “magic” circle of rocks around the firepit so you don’t get too close. What to do if you get burned or catch fire (stop drop roll, pour on cold water and go to the hospital) and other tips. The coloring book is narrated in English and Chichewa so tracey read the English and Lawrence read in Chichewa. It was amazing how well the kids sat for the story! They even answered questions after (so it is that they don’t get the English I use since we don’t translate often in class). They each got a coloring book to take home and some of them brought it back the next day completely colored in.