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!!