One more week!

We're in the final week of the school year at Mahali, and preparations for the Christmas party and graduation of our leavers are well underway! Yesterday I helped the children paint flags on huge pieces of paper - these will become their 'graduation gowns'! I think possibly more paint ended up on me than on the paper, but I failed to get a picture of that so you'll have to make do with one of the flags instead!

Cute!

Some of the children from baby class were fascinated by my camera and apparently felt they had to perform, launching into 'My God is so big' (although it rapidly fizzled out!) The one with the green hat who puts his finger right up to the camera is called Paul, he makes me laugh because his voice is quite deep and he's just generally like an old man :-)

Please excuse the shaky camerawork and my appearance in the video! It was hard with all the children crowding round!

Two months!

Yes, I have now been here for two months! In many ways it feels like longer, because here feels like home to me now. My morning routine is starting to be something I do in my sleep - up, shower, breakfast, out at 7:45-8ish (has crept a bit later this week, oops), walk up the road, catch a bus or matatu, negotiate the road crossing and the mud/rubbish/men on motorbikes/occasional policemen with guns around Karen roundabout, catch a matatu, get off, walk up the track, say good morning to people on the way, get to school, greet the staff, start the day.

Last week all the children had assessments, so I mainly helped the teachers with those, sitting with a few children that needed support and then doing some of the marking. This was another fairly eye-opening time, in that each class had tests in every subject, including 'creative' which I'd have thought was quite difficult to test for in a meaningful way!

With less than two weeks until we finish for Christmas, it's all got pretty busy this week. I've been compiling a brochure to advertise the school to parents who could potentially afford to pay a fee to send their children to Mahali. I'm quite pleased that I managed to get to grips with Publisher, which I've not used much before, to produce a threefold leaflet thing. My family will know what I mean when I say Grandma would have been proud (she used to rave about Publisher as she used it to produce cards!) Here is a picture of each side of the leaflet:

If you are a praying person, please pray that this leaflet would be distributed to the right people and that God would bless this new stage in the work of Mahali Pa Watoto. The thinking behind introducing some fee-paying places is mainly to increase local involvement, making this a more sustainable project and not wholly reliant on funding from overseas.

I'm also continuing with my groups this week and had a lovely 1:1 session with Hannah, one of the girls I've talked about previously (see this post) She can be extremely difficult in a whole class situation, very attention-seeking and hyperactive, but she thrives in a small group or individually where she can have plenty of attention and feedback from the teacher. It's a huge worry because she should be leaving us and starting at a primary school in January, but given what I've seen and heard of the government primary schools, she is going to find it very hard. Added to that there are several issues with her home situation and we really need wisdom to know how to deal with them, and whether there is any alternative for her education.

So, one more week after this one which will finish with the Christmas party. This is an eagerly anticipated event, incorporating the graduation of the children who are leaving us as well as some drama, singing, and (most importantly) sausages, chips and ice cream! I'm looking forward to it!

I shall leave you with some fun pictures I took last week.

I love this - they're 'cooking' with leaves and flowers!

A small visitor!

The beautiful garden

I am very blessed to be living where I am. I have friendly people around me and the compound is safe and quiet (except the hyraxes at night!) The surroundings are absolutely beautiful, and I hope I don't ever take them for granted. After we'd had quite a few rainy days in the past couple of weeks, I took the opportunity this week to get out with my camera and take some photos of the flowers, and I thought I'd share some of them with you along with a few of the birds that come to the feeder/bird bath outside my window.

God's wonderful creation!

Today in the playground...

Update

Well I'm feeling rather bad that I haven't posted for a while. I was feeling quite under the weather last week; I didn't go to school on Wednesday and was still a bit weary at the weekend, so didn't do much at all on Saturday. Then on Sunday I had an eventful afternoon, much of which was spent at a local hospital, because Dee's stepmother had a nasty fall while we were out for lunch. She's getting better now but she came right down on her face and did quite a bit of damage, so needed to be checked out.

So what with one thing and another, and my failure to get to bed early enough, this week seems to be hurtling past so quickly and I'm tired out by the time I get home. And tired out doesn't make for a good post, so I'll try to get on and stop rambling! Here's what I've been up to:

•  Having meetings

(This one's just to prove I was there!)

We had a meeting a while ago now with all the staff and some of the trustees which was long but good I think. We were mostly discussing next year, when we plan to take in an extra class so we have two baby classes, and there will now be fee-paying places alongside the normal places. The aim is to make Mahali Pa Watoto a little more self-sufficient as it currently relies largely on funds raised in the UK. There is a lot to be done practically to prepare for this and we would value your prayers.

We also met last week to discuss the teachers' visits to the Montessori nursery. Most of them really enjoyed going, and thought the place was wonderful! However, it's clear that many of them still didn't really see the independent activities that the children were doing as learning - rather they seemed to think that unless they were with an adult they weren't actually learning. And because they don't get started on formally learning letters and numbers as early as ours do (which is far too early in my opinion) the teachers saw those children as 'behind' ours. It's hard for our teachers, who have been through a very traditional education themselves, and have been trained in traditional teaching methods, to accept that there is any other way. But I think gradually they will start to see the benefits of using play and letting the children make choices. One thing that was suggested is that we use a spare classroom as a 'Montessori room', where we keep all the equipment, instead of each class having a small selection. The room could be set out like the rooms they saw, with no tables and chairs, just a big carpet space, and child-level shelving around the walls with the equipment there for them to access freely. I wasn't sure about this to start with, but actually I think it could work well and I'm quite excited about it.

One of the shelving units at the Montessori nursery

Lucy doing an activity on the carpet!

• Teaching groups

I've really enjoyed doing this (have I said that already?!) although it's been a bit on and off with the nursery visits, my day off sick and the fact that this week was assessments anyway so the children all had to be in class. But it's been rewarding to see the children making little steps and most of all having fun learning!

• Holding a choir each day (and trying to get better at the guitar!)

•  Helping do some cutting out for the card-making group that Dee has started up with a few of the mums and Joyce (teaching and kitchen assistant) This project has been a real eye-opener to me; the mums mostly have little or no experience of using scissors and glue, of straight lines and spacing and all the things we take for granted when we make a card. But they're coming along nicely :-)

• Mopping the floor!

We all have our allocated rooms to mop on a Tuesday and a Friday - actually this isn't my area but my room wasn't too bad so I did a bit of the veranda too - one of the mums was doing most of it in lieu of a food contribution for this month.

• Generally having lots of fun with these amazing children! 

Choir!

Apologies for the quality, and the fact that there's at least one child singing up in the stratosphere somewhere, but just to give you an idea of the choir - they're all in top class, about 6 years old, and we've been going a few weeks.

Some pictures from my groups today

Elizabeth from middle class counting out ceramic zebras (donated by Dee)

She's counted out 9 correctly!

We also did number matching (Steve I've stolen the foam numbers!)

Language group from top class making words