market stall in a bus station
james and two tagalongs
making a canoe
Saturday, April 10, 2010
salon visit
Our school assistant plays the guitar. Yeah! And so we get music time on the good days. We sit in a semi-circle on our mats and each child gets to pick a song to sing. I’m learning some new songs (and some new lyrics to songs I thought I knew)—twinkle twinkle, a butterfly is beautiful, jesus loves me, jesus loves the little children, miss polly had a dolly, a couple of chichewa songs, joy to the world, he will make a way, come to jesus. It is very cute to hear and watch them sing as they have movements and can sing very well when they want to. The only problem is that I then have the songs stuck in my head for the next 3 days or so…
visits and birthdays
So far none of my kids have had birthdays during the school year. Mine was the first one coming up. We do a calendar every morning where we go over the date and day of the week—I can’t tell how much they understand what we’re doing but they can repeat it and point at the right words as they say them (random pointing still happens often). So I made a picture of a birthday cake and put it up on the calendar. What is that? I asked. Cake! It’s my birthday! Many of the kids responded. No, it will be my birthday on Tuesday, I corrected. So we had lots of discussion about what happens for birthdays and if we like cake and friends coming over. If I listened to them they were all coming to my house on my birthday but I thought we would have our party at school…
I also took in a picture of my family and told them that my mom was coming to visit. They were so excited and everyone wanted to meet mom. I put the picture up on the Friday she would be here and told them that she wanted to come and meet them and see what they did all day at school. Each day after that we counted down to the two big happenings before easter break. I think the attention spans during group time were getting a little bit longer (though I really try not to push it too much)
I also took in a picture of my family and told them that my mom was coming to visit. They were so excited and everyone wanted to meet mom. I put the picture up on the Friday she would be here and told them that she wanted to come and meet them and see what they did all day at school. Each day after that we counted down to the two big happenings before easter break. I think the attention spans during group time were getting a little bit longer (though I really try not to push it too much)
rest time
So lots of my kids (out of 11 if 4 are doing it I think it is lots) are on occasion coming to me during break and laying with their heads in my lap. Completely comfortable and seemingly exhausted. I’ve had some conversations with Dorothy and she and I agree that 4.5 hour mornings of school is long for kindergarten and even at the weekday school in Gastonia she was at they had a rest time. We’ve gotten the mats for the kids to sit on and I use them for group times to set the kids roughly where I want them to sit. The challenge is to get them to sit on the mat without moving it…we’re working on that—they seem to like to sit right next to each other but then they can’t help but poke at each other. I decided to implement a rest time. When they come in from break I have the mats spread out on the floor and I ask them to put their head on the mat. Most of them will do it and some of them are even quiet for 3 minutes. The others sit and fidget and are somewhat calmer than they were before. While rest time doesn’t last long (5 minutes max right now) it does seem to help break up the day and give the kids a little down time…the mats still get moved quite often so I occasionally think about duct tape or superglue but I haven’t resorted to that yet.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
weekend
I was doing so well at keeping up the blog and now it’s been almost 3 weeks…here we go to get back into it.
A weekend at home—we went for a walk through some villages. We just started walking down a road and kept on going. We were followed by Shadow and Sarky (2 dogs that like to come visit our house) we don’t mind having the dogs but the Malawians are scared of dogs. Sadly the dogs don’t listen when we tell them to go home. And today they decided to chase goats as we walked to the river. Not nice for the goats though the dogs just wanted to get a rise out of the goats. If the goats ignored them they lost interest quickly.
When we got back we found that while Dorothy was in the kitchen some kids had come into the living room and taken a small pretty wallet and the candy that had been on the table. We figure it was kids as all our electronics (ipods, cell phones, and computer) were also in the room and all still there. Not a good feeling to know someone has been in and taken things. We are much more careful now about keeping the doors shut when we aren’t in the room. The kids were getting much more aggressive as well—pushing their way into the kitchen while Rhona was cooking and then yelling at Maralyse when she told them it was time to go home. (we haven’t seen them for a while now which is a relief)
Sunday we got a ride in another direction to go swimming at a waterfall. 40 minute drive (11 of us in a jeep) then 40 minute walk followed by at least 20 kids (who pointed us in the right direction on occasion). The river was up and the waterfall was powerful with spray that wet the rocks just enough to make them slippery. Climb up and jump off to be whisked downstream. There is a high jump spot and a higher jumping spot…I did them both though convincing myself to actually jump was a little difficult (climbing back down would have been very difficult.
A weekend at home—we went for a walk through some villages. We just started walking down a road and kept on going. We were followed by Shadow and Sarky (2 dogs that like to come visit our house) we don’t mind having the dogs but the Malawians are scared of dogs. Sadly the dogs don’t listen when we tell them to go home. And today they decided to chase goats as we walked to the river. Not nice for the goats though the dogs just wanted to get a rise out of the goats. If the goats ignored them they lost interest quickly.
When we got back we found that while Dorothy was in the kitchen some kids had come into the living room and taken a small pretty wallet and the candy that had been on the table. We figure it was kids as all our electronics (ipods, cell phones, and computer) were also in the room and all still there. Not a good feeling to know someone has been in and taken things. We are much more careful now about keeping the doors shut when we aren’t in the room. The kids were getting much more aggressive as well—pushing their way into the kitchen while Rhona was cooking and then yelling at Maralyse when she told them it was time to go home. (we haven’t seen them for a while now which is a relief)
Sunday we got a ride in another direction to go swimming at a waterfall. 40 minute drive (11 of us in a jeep) then 40 minute walk followed by at least 20 kids (who pointed us in the right direction on occasion). The river was up and the waterfall was powerful with spray that wet the rocks just enough to make them slippery. Climb up and jump off to be whisked downstream. There is a high jump spot and a higher jumping spot…I did them both though convincing myself to actually jump was a little difficult (climbing back down would have been very difficult.
weekend
I was doing so well at keeping up the blog and now it’s been almost 3 weeks…here we go to get back into it.
A weekend at home—we went for a walk through some villages. We just started walking down a road and kept on going. We were followed by Shadow and Sarky (2 dogs that like to come visit our house) we don’t mind having the dogs but the Malawians are scared of dogs. Sadly the dogs don’t listen when we tell them to go home. And today they decided to chase goats as we walked to the river. Not nice for the goats though the dogs just wanted to get a rise out of the goats. If the goats ignored them they lost interest quickly.
When we got back we found that while Dorothy was in the kitchen some kids had come into the living room and taken a small pretty wallet and the candy that had been on the table. We figure it was kids as all our electronics (ipods, cell phones, and computer) were also in the room and all still there. Not a good feeling to know someone has been in and taken things. We are much more careful now about keeping the doors shut when we aren’t in the room. The kids were getting much more aggressive as well—pushing their way into the kitchen while Rhona was cooking and then yelling at Maralyse when she told them it was time to go home. (we haven’t seen them for a while now which is a relief)
Sunday we got a ride in another direction to go swimming at a waterfall. 40 minute drive (11 of us in a jeep) then 40 minute walk followed by at least 20 kids (who pointed us in the right direction on occasion). The river was up and the waterfall was powerful with spray that wet the rocks just enough to make them slippery. Climb up and jump off to be whisked downstream. There is a high jump spot and a higher jumping spot…I did them both though convincing myself to actually jump was a little difficult (climbing back down would have been very difficult.
A weekend at home—we went for a walk through some villages. We just started walking down a road and kept on going. We were followed by Shadow and Sarky (2 dogs that like to come visit our house) we don’t mind having the dogs but the Malawians are scared of dogs. Sadly the dogs don’t listen when we tell them to go home. And today they decided to chase goats as we walked to the river. Not nice for the goats though the dogs just wanted to get a rise out of the goats. If the goats ignored them they lost interest quickly.
When we got back we found that while Dorothy was in the kitchen some kids had come into the living room and taken a small pretty wallet and the candy that had been on the table. We figure it was kids as all our electronics (ipods, cell phones, and computer) were also in the room and all still there. Not a good feeling to know someone has been in and taken things. We are much more careful now about keeping the doors shut when we aren’t in the room. The kids were getting much more aggressive as well—pushing their way into the kitchen while Rhona was cooking and then yelling at Maralyse when she told them it was time to go home. (we haven’t seen them for a while now which is a relief)
Sunday we got a ride in another direction to go swimming at a waterfall. 40 minute drive (11 of us in a jeep) then 40 minute walk followed by at least 20 kids (who pointed us in the right direction on occasion). The river was up and the waterfall was powerful with spray that wet the rocks just enough to make them slippery. Climb up and jump off to be whisked downstream. There is a high jump spot and a higher jumping spot…I did them both though convincing myself to actually jump was a little difficult (climbing back down would have been very difficult.
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