The kids were home this past week for their quarterly break.
(I’m not sure what best to call the break—Mid-term break? Mid-semester break?
Spring break? Hence, quarterly break.) When the kids are home for these breaks,
we like to keep them occupied. So, we set up a schedule of classes for the kids
and put them to work. Of course, work for the kids also means work for us! We
spent several weeks prior to the break preparing our schedules, classes, and
worksheets. When Monday arrived, we were as ready as we could be.
Jeni and Maiwe, our two tutors, are such a great help. Jeni
took the younger kids (Prep-Std 2) in the mornings. Maiwe got each of the other
standards at least twice. We really wanted him to focus mainly on teaching Swahili
during his sessions with the kids. At the end of the week, he told me that the
time we had allotted for Swahili, 2 hours, was just not enough time. Although
the kids speak Swahili, they struggled during his sessions. Now to figure out
how to give him more sessions with the kids during the next break…
Karen and I started our classes at 8 am. When Monday morning
arrived, we definitely questioned our sanity! (Thankfully, we did get used to
the schedule by the middle of the week.) We had an interesting start to our
week on Monday morning. Because of a big storm outside, we had very limited
natural light in our classrooms. And because the big house has no electricity,
we had very limited light in general. I was teaching in the big room and had
the least amount of light. I ended up having the kids do their work by
flashlight. Of course, they didn’t mind. They quite enjoyed playing with the
flashlights!
By Wednesday the kids were getting pretty antsy. Thankfully,
Karen and I had planned to switch up the schedule on Thursday and Friday. I’m
not sure who was more eager for a change of pace—the kids or the teachers! The last two days of class, we divided the
older kids (standards 4-6) up into small groups of 4. We then took 30 minutes
with each small group to do some basic computer training. The kids LOVED it!
The first day, we showed them how to turn the computers on and how to open a
program. Then, to get them to practice their mouse skills, we let them play around
in Paint. They definitely had fun! The second day, we got them to do some
typing practice in Word. I think they enjoyed that as much as Paint. The kids
all keep asking me when they get to use the computers again. When I went to do
devotions in the older boys’ house on Saturday night, one of them even asked me
if we were going to use the computers then. Unfortunately, I had to tell them
that we didn’t have any other sessions planned right now.
This past weekend, we had two girls from the States come visit
Tumaini. Saturday morning, Beth decided to get out the sidewalk chalk for the
kids to enjoy with the visitors. The kids definitely enjoyed the chalk—and in a
completely different way than anyone anticipated. Initially, the kids simply
drew with the chalk. The fun started when they began to wipe their chalk
drawings off with their hands. All of a sudden, they realized they now had
chalk on their hands. And then the chalk spread like wildfire—from hands, to
clothes, to faces. What a sight it was!
Of course, it wouldn’t be fun unless the visitors also got chalked, so
the kids all chased after the two guests until they were also covered in chalk!
In order to get some pictures of the kids, I had to threaten them with deleting
the pictures if any of them touched me. Apparently, the threat worked, because
I got some hilarious pictures!
