Today was a big day. Very tired. Loved the kids. Love our assignment at the Step Up Nursery School. The head of school is great and organized and wants our input and excited to have us there to work with them. We helped in the classrooms today with preparing work assignments for the kids’ classwork, we helped them with their writing and pronunciation, we read stories to them and began teaching them some songs at the end of class. We were supposed to be observing today but we said we want to participate and help out and it turned out to be a fun morning with the kids. Proud of Sam getting up in front of the class and reading Little Red Riding Hood. The principal would translate in Swahili. He was very animated and the kids were captivated by Sam reading and then the performance basically put on by the head. I then read a story - 3 Pigs. They loved that and how each story ended they just threw their heads back and laughed. It was really fun. With the little kids they were totally obsessed with my hair. Nearly every girl in the 3-5 year old class ran their fingers through my hair. It was a bit crazy but so funny too. We organized our game plan for tomorrow while at the school after seeing what supplies they have. We decided on BINGO and teaching them the songs and then playing the game. For the older kids we are doing math problems and the answers are on the sheet. The younger ones i have been making BINGO boards with lower and upper case letters and numbers and we will draw those and they can mark their boards. We also found a board game and will use that the next day. We might also draw rainbows and teach them the colors of the rainbow and the song Red and Yellow and Pink and Green,…. Getting a plan together since we are teaching the kids for the next two weeks.
In the afternoon after lunch back at the house we had a Swahili lesson. It was hard, but I think overall it is probably much easier than learning English. We learned some sayings like Mimi ni Karen (my name is Karen) Na wewe Je? (what is yours?) Mimi ninatoka Marekani ( I am from the USA)… We also learned some helpful works for our classroom tomorrow: Tafadhali Acha- Please stop… kids get a little unruly at times ;)
In the afternoon we went into town and exchanged some money and hit the grocery store. Sam was having a real hankering for some Nutella and I was in need of an ice cream bar. We got our treats, some juice, chips, water bottles,… After dinner we went into town and met with a guy about doing a two day safari to some incredible crater nearby this weekend. I was negotiating with him and told him my price, he will get back to us.
We have really enjoyed the two girls in our group. We couldn’t ask for more fun and game and normal girls. They are so adventurous and just really enjoy being with them. They are game for all of our card games and exploring, etc. The rest of the house is all very very nice too and the one character of the group, a woman that has spent almost a year here and has done every safari and everything that could be offered and has literally sold her house and living over here volunteering. She got stuck in Zanzibar last weekend, she will be fun and full of stories I can tell.
We will get settled into our jobs this week and will be fun to see how we grow. Fun swapping ideas with the other volunteers and decided with Jenna and Sammi what we will use each others materials so that each night there wont be so much work and since they are in a Nursery School too, different one, we can pull our ideas together and share.
Headed to bed, so tired.
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