Week 3

                                                                                   “You created every part of me.”

                                                                                                 Psalm 139:13

 

      This has been a different week for me since two of the days I was unable to attend school sick with a fever, nausea, diarrhea, stomach pains, and dizziness. Amber and I both got hit with whatever this thing is, but thankfully the antibiotics worked very quickly for me and I was able to return to school on Friday. I often wonder if God allowed this to happen to give my co-teacher the opportunity to build her confidence in teaching the children and leading the class. She is very capable and catches on quickly, I am very proud of her and her accomplishment in handling all 4 classes by herself in two different days. She said everything went well and the children were on good behavior. She did the afternoon classes completely alone, which they are very well behaved, so can imagine that wasn’t too big of a head ache, and the morning classes she had help for two hours from our hopefully new teacher, Mweemba. So  praise God that he gave me an amazing co-teacher and potentially another great lady to be trained as a teacher in the program here at MOL.

 

As for the children, this week they were introduced to a new letter…the letter “S”. A lot of the children remembered the letter “M” and could read it when I held it up on “Monday” and “Music” at the beginning of the week, the younger ones are still getting a hang of it,  but they have plenty of time to develop their reading skills. A couple of the children recognized the letter “S” before I could even introduce it to them. The children really love Coffee Can Theater and even on the worse days, it seems to grab their attention for the 5-8 minute story about the Zebras in the bush :o)

 

In honor of the letter S, I decided to open the discovery/sensory table and introduce Sand for the children to play  with in class. The first day, I did sand and water, but the water was too messy with the sand to clean up “mud”, so we changed to just sand and another time we will do just water. The children had do much fun working with the different sized containers in the center, sifting through the sand finding there are “small pieces” and “big pieces” of sand. They also said they were using “smaller containers to fill bigger ones”. The children were working together and enjoying their time at the  discovery table.

 

We also completed our series of color exploration with paint. The children worked very hard to discover what color red and yellow would make. Some children hypothesized that red and yellow would make “red”, some said “orange”, and some said “yellow”…a few of the younger children guessed “green” since that is the color we were making in the previous weeks. They also mixed red and blue and discovered the beautiful color purple that comes out of that combination.

 

The children are getting really good at recognizing and sorting colors, I often find the children using the counting bears, or other manipulatives around the room to sort colors. They struggle differentiating between red and purple and then blue and green, but they work together to show each other when one has mixed the two up! I can see their problem solving skills developing more and more each day, through their play.

 

Another new thing that was introduced to the children this week was the formal bible lessons. I have found a great curriculum that works well with the Zambian children and for this age, I am just taking the theme for the week, summarizing the story and then hoping they take away the message that God has for them. This week the lesson was “I am Special”, showing the children how much God cares about them and how he formed each of them different from the others, that there is only one of them in the whole world. We have a puppet friend, Jeremiah, who brings messages from God to the children on Mondays and Tuesdays, and then the rest of the week we take time to do an activity and retell the story in our own words. The children sit so quiet and listen to everything that Jeremiah tells them :o)

 

 

Other exciting news is that the playground area is being cleared. I asked if the  parents of the children would all come, taking turns, to help clear the land in front of the school for the children to have space to play and once Jako returns, for the playground to be worked on. The community rarely does things unless you pay them or very few people show up. So far I have had over 15 families (moms) come to clear the land. They are doing an excellent job and I hear there are still more coming to work, so by the end of next week, I pray and hope the land is level, cleared of big stones, and ready for the children to use. It seems God is using this preschool for more than I can imagine…

 

“God has made us what we are!”

Ephesians 2:10