Holiday Program

 

 

Most of you know that problem we had at the beginning of the year since the grade 1 and 2 building was not completed last year.  The parents complained greatly that there was no place for their children here and no place at the community school…so all the children who graduated the preschool last year have been sitting at home with no school to go to.  April is our holiday month where we close the preschool for one month for the teachers and kids to have a break.  This year I thought it might be possible to run a “mock grade 1 program” for the children who have not been going to school.  I asked Medis if she would be interested in running the program or if she would even have time since April is prime harvesting month.  She said that she would love to run the program, we would just have to do it in the afternoons. 

So Medis and I sat down and created some lesson plans for the program, introducing the children to new things they haven’t yet done…teaching more Enlgish and Chitonga, enhancing their critical thinking skills, extra fun art projects, cool science experiments, and introducing grade 1 math concepts to the kids. 

This children have completed 2 weeks of this holiday program being introduced to dinosaurs, volcanoes, counting by 5’s and 10’s, basic addition, critical thinking problems, nature collages, light and shadows, color mixing, and much more from all their dramatic play throughout the school day.  In the coming weeks we hope to introduce more rhyming words to the kids, have them author and illustrate a class story, introduce subtraction, build on the other skills they have learned, create wire sculpture, make sun catchers, and explore with various materials in their discovery table. I am having a blast with our kids from last year, getting to do so much more with them and working with them inside the classroom one last time before moving away.  I think Medis and the children are having having a great time with this program…we just pray it will be enough to catch them up and prepare them for what comes next.

 

We are planning for this group of kids to be able to come to school and learn a few things for this month and God-willing the other holidays months too.  Our hope is to catch them up as much as we can with grade one objectives, so that in January, this group of kids can start in grade 2, leaving grade 1 open for the 30 kids graduating from preschool this year.  It has been quite the struggle to figure out how we can get all the children into a classroom next year and I think we have ironed out a loose plan from our end, but now we need the community to do their part in building the school!! 

New Sunday School Teachers

 

For two years, I have been working with the church in Mukamba teaching Sunday School and hoping to set a model that the adults can carry on if I were to leave.  Well my departure date is coming up, so a couple months ago, I thought it was time to ask some of the church members to step up as Sunday School teachers.  We said the more teachers we have the easier it will be so that they could switch Sundays and each have time in bible study, as well as teaching the young children.  The next Sunday we had two young men committed to teaching Sunday School.  We had a short meeting with them to give them some guidelines about teaching young children and a list of stories with references in the bible.  Then they would rotate each week taking turns teaching and going to their bible study. 

So far the two guys have been doing a great job!  If one does not show up, the other teacher is there to teach the children.  Some Sundays they read the story from the bible, while other Sunday’s they tell the story and even get the children to act it out!  The kids are enjoying having teaching in their own language much more than having to translate from English.  It seems that the children are retaining more information as well, since I see some kids participate which have rarely spoke in the past, either because they are shy or don’t understand the story. 

We now have a third teacher who joined the team and has a lot of experience teaching Sunday School.  He will be a great addition to the teachers and hopefully they will enjoy teaching every third Sunday, instead of every other Sunday.  Please be praying for these brave men who undertook a very challenging task in the church.  Pray for encouragement from within the church community, as well from the children.  Pray that God fills them with amazing ideas in how to teach the children and make it fun for them.  Pray that God also changes their lives from the experiences of working with the children and learning from the children too.  The children have several games they enjoy playing after our lesson, so it will be interesting to see if the teachers play the games with the kids as time goes on.

 

Praise be to God for His perfect plans and timing for all things…Praise be to Him for raising these teachers up and sustaining them with knowledge and wisdom!!