Photos! (lots of them!)

Once more I have been foxed by a combination of power cuts, something wrong with the internet (even now I'm on a mobile internet dongle thing and hoping it holds up!) and also a dodgy tummy. I think it's getting better but I felt pretty bad at school on Tuesday, didn't go in yesterday and am still at home today. Hope I can get in tomorrow. I'm not sure what it was - a peculiar migraine, something I ate or a bug...

Anyway, here are some photos of what we've been up to so far in the Montessori room!

Ready to learn, sitting around the edge of the carpet

Free choice activities

Busy busy busy!

Learning to get things out and put them away again!

Sharing with each other

Learning with our teacher

Doing fastenings

Learning to build a tower with blocks in size order

Proud of her tower!

Working together using different shapes

Another proud builder!

Using the fantastic natural wood for building

Concentration...

An engineer in the making?

Cooking with our teacher

Making dinner

Cutting up some fruit

I like playing!

Exploring the farm

We like the animals!

Playing together

I have some nice video of the children playing in here too, but I will have to wait until I have proper internet back to upload that. Meanwhile I hope you enjoy the photos!

By the way the staff meeting about the Montessori room went better than I was expecting, we had some good discussion on how some of the things could be used to complement the curriculum, and the teacher who is less enthusiastic actually pointed out that a lot of equipment is cross-curricular so the children learn more than one thing when doing an activity! This was great progress - thank you God! Next meeting (which has now been postponed because I've been away) each teacher (including me) has prepared to tell us all about one of the pieces of sensorial equipment, which I think are the hardest to understand and use. I hope it will be a useful session.

Normal service will soon resume... I hope!

I've been a bit quiet on here because this week seems to have got rather busy! Each day after school I've been meaning to post something but haven't quite got round to it. I've been replying to emails that I'd let build up, writing thank you letters, taking up jogging and various other things which haven't left time to blog. I have loads of lovely photos and some video from the Montessori lessons this week, but haven't yet downloaded them from the memory cards they're stored on in order to choose some to post on here. And today I'm off to Kenyatta National Hospital with some people from church to visit and read to some children there... they are trying to set up a regular ministry I think, but I'm just going along to help and see how it is. If I have time later I'll try to do something about those photos...

Montessori classroom

This week one of the main things I've been doing is setting up the Montessori classroom. This has come from an idea that one of the teachers had during a staff meeting, that we should put all the Montessori equipment into one room that the classes could all use at different times during the week. This way they could see and use any of it rather than having a small amount in each classroom which wasn't enough to do a session with the whole class. Also it meant the teachers could stick with the more traditional classroom set-up that they are happy with - tables and chairs and a small carpet area - but have a space without tables and chairs where the children can learn in a different style. I hope this is a good compromise and that in time perhaps elements of the Montessori ethos, learning through play and hands-on experiences, will filter into the teaching more generally as well.

Anyway, as promised, here are some photos:

The view from the doorway

The sensorial activities shelves

The maths shelves

The language (left) and practical life (right) shelves

Practical life and small world corner

Now, strictly speaking, any Montessori experts among you will have noticed that not all the things in these pictures are 100% Montessori. I have added in some of the games and things that we have which I think are good but that generally languish in the staffroom. I am not an expert on Montessori education and am not trying to pretend I am, but I like to get children learning through hands-on experiences. I am also so interested to give these children a little more freedom and choice than they are used to and see what happens. I hope they will flourish and their teachers will be convinced! The plan is that each class will have a number of lessons a week in the room, which will be taught either by their teachers or by me or a mixture of the two! I have said to the teachers that I am happy to be an assistant or to lead, whatever they feel comfortable with at least initially. The only exception is the top class - they will only have a free choice session in there with me as their teacher decided there wasn't room for any sessions in the timetable. This is a shame, but this teacher has yet to be convinced of the impact of this kind of learning so it's not too much of a surprise. It's a little discouraging, but I'm hoping the enthusiasm of the others will help to bring her round in the end!

So we shall get started next week. On Monday we will have a staff meeting looking at how the teachers can use the room, and I'd value prayers for this, that there would be a positive atmosphere and attitudes. I'll let you know how it goes...

50th post on my 30th birthday (or some other, more snappy title!)

Happy Birthday to me! Well, I'm not actually 30 yet, not for a few hours (ed. - I started writing this earlier, now it's a race against time!) - I was born a bit after 8pm... but with the time difference of course that's a bit after 11pm here... not that I'm hanging on to my twenties or anything! It's just I really don't feel old enough to be 30!

Anyway, it has been a fantastic day! I treated myself to a taxi ride to school with the excuse of taking a couple of bags of things that needed to go. It was nice to sit back and relax for the whole journey! I spent the morning doing bits and pieces of admin as well as taking all the Montessori equipment into the classroom we've allocated for it - the idea is that we set it up like the Montessori classrooms in the nursery we visited, with equipment on shelves and a carpet in the middle - no tables and chairs. Then I've timetabled slots for each class to use the room so that they can include Montessori techniques in their teaching without having to change the classroom layout they are used to etc and with all the equipment to hand. I hope it works! It should be set up by the end of this week and then I'll take photos.

One nice thing that happened today was that I was able to give a boy the first pair of the shoes that I brought from my school in England - thank you All Saints! He was extremely pleased with them, and with his socks (which actually had hearts on but he didn't seem to mind!). He had come in bare feet because one of his shoes got lost at home, and his dad was supposed to be looking for it and dropping it off, but he didn't come. It was such a rainy and muddy day and anyway the shoes he had been wearing before weren't waterproof. His new ones are a bit big but he'll grow into them, and he was so pleased!

I told him he looked very smart - a widely-used term of approbation here!

After lunch the children had to come in from the playground as it was raining. They were told to sit down on the veranda and there seemed to be something being organised... Before I knew it, I was given a party hat to wear and told to sit in the seat of honour!

There was some singing, and then a cake appeared!

I cut the cake, with a little help...

...and there was enough for everyone to have some!

Then I apparently stood around eating cake for a while...

Me with Benson (manager) and Lucy (headteacher)

Me with Lucy and Sharon, a student

After this the teachers helped me give out lollies that I'd brought for the children (this is definitely not England, it wouldn't be allowed in a 'healthy school'!!)

After this Lucy got out the bubbles...

... but it was apparently a cunning distraction, as the next thing I knew I had cake in my face! Apparently this type of thing is a birthday tradition... or that's what they tell me!

Once I'd cleaned up, there was little left to do apart from pose with the children!

I think they enjoyed their cake and lollies, and I certainly enjoyed my Mahali Pa Watoto birthday celebrations! But the day didn't end there... on the way home I travelled on the yellow matatu! There's one very distinctive yellow matatu that goes between Hardy and Karen, and I'd never been on it - somehow it always seemed to be avoiding me. But today, there it was! What a nice birthday present!

In the evening Dee and Peter gave me a lovely birthday dinner, and I spoke to family and Jon of course. Now being as I've featured in so many of these photos, I felt it was only fair to post one of Jon! He dressed up in his suit for our skype call, and he even made Anthony the ape a party hat!

What a lovely birthday! I am a very lucky girl :-)

PS Thank you so much to the kind people that gave me a birthday donation!

Last day of my twenties!

So, it was my final day of being twenty-something today! Eek! And what did I do to celebrate this momentous occasion? Well, I...

• altered and reprinted the new class timetables
• made a spreadsheet recording all the food contributions and fees so far this term
• weighed and measured all the children
• recorded all this data on spreadsheets (and made some into graphs just for the fun of it!)
• ate ugali and vegetables for lunch
• did the first choir with the new top class
• began to move the Montessori equipment into its new classroom
• measured the classroom for a carpet/rug
• packed everything up and went home!

 And on the way home I went to the shops and bought 3 bags of shopping including 1 bag for school (well, this includes lollipops for my birthday which hardly count!). I think that as today was so productive I can have a nice rest tomorrow!

If you are feeling particularly generous and want to make me extra happy on my big birthday then you could give me a little donation on my justgiving page (link over there <--- ) I'm very very nearly at my target but if I could get over it that would be great, as I'm staying till June which is longer than my original plan. And any money that I don't need in the end will of course be going to the charity and therefore to the work at Mahali Pa Watoto!

Thank you!

A busy week

It has been a long week! I have meant to post, in fact I have composed bits of posts in my head, but haven't managed to get as far as typing them up. We had registration of new pupils on Monday and Tuesday, as well as setting up the classrooms (they had been emptied over the holidays as our premises were used by the Vineyard churches). On Monday we were taking fee-paying pupils, but most of the ones that came were not aware of this and we had to ask them to come back the next day. However, we did register one fee-paying pupil, and we hope that we may have some more interest as the term gets underway... we have up to 20 places available. On Tuesday we had around 20 pupils registering for ordinary places, which was the number we were aiming for (we want around 40 in total). However, we have to do home visits to check that these are families with a genuine need, not ones that could pay the fees, as we want to ensure we are taking the most needy. This involved groups of us walking back with those from each area and visiting their houses one by one, interviewing the parents and asking about things like their jobs, their rent and so on.

The exterior of a typical house - there are two in this picture

Having been to some children's houses before, I knew what to expect... but it's still quite a difficult experience. Most live in one-room houses made of readily available materials such as mbati (corrugated metal sheets, seen in the photo) and wood. The houses are divided into rooms using fabric hung from washing lines which are strung across from one wall to another. Entering the house it is usually dark and very hot, as there is often just one window at the front, which may or may not have glass in it (the ones in the picture do). Sometimes there was washing lying around waiting to be done, by hand of course, as many of the mums take in washing from other people to make a small living for their families. Other houses were full of flies or even had chickens wandering in and out. It is hard to imagine how a family of five or more (which most of them were) manage to exist in these conditions, but I know others in the biggest slums have it a lot worse. We did pass communal toilets in several places which is good to see - I know in Kibera slum they are few and far between. Many of the houses were clean and tidy with nice details such as a plant in a pot hung outside the front door; although they had little these people were determined to make the best of what they had. I felt more admiration than pity.

This boy loved having his photo taken!

On Tuesday after all the walking and visits in pretty hot conditions I felt in need of a bit of a pick-me-up, so I stopped in Karen on the way home and went to Dormans cafe for a juice and a piece of cake. To be honest it jarred with me that having visited these families struggling to make enough money to buy basic food, I was able to sit and enjoy this luxury, but on the other hand I know I need to look after myself to be in a position to help them, and that includes the occasional treat!

The cake was so big I brought half home for the next day!

On Wednesday all the children started back at school. Except it wasn't all of them - more like half. This is partly just normal, as families return from visiting relatives and get back to normal, and partly because we were asking for the food contributions for the term (450 shillings, around £3.50) rather than a month at a time. This may sound a bit tough, but all the new children have paid and started, which shows that it is possible for these families, with one or two exceptions in which case the mum is given some work in the school in lieu of payment. Previously the money was collected each month, but it was an administrative nightmare and was hard to enforce - if they didn't pay, we couldn't realistically send their child away for up to a week each month or however long it took them to pay. And it is possible to make around 200 shillings a day for doing washing so this amount is fair. I hope next week will see all the children return and the term can get underway properly. However, those that started have been enjoying the lovely weather and playing in our brilliant playground.

Cheeky faces from last year!

Old and new Mahali pupils posing together

Can you tell these two are sisters?!

"I love the see-saw!"

This girl is great at 'mummying' the new ones!

This one is very cute but we think he's too young to start!

I did more home visits on Wednesday and Thursday as a few more parents turned up wanting places for their children. This takes us a bit over 20 but apparently the numbers usually fall as the year goes on, so it's as well to start with a few more, and as we've only got one fee-paying so far, but two baby classes, the numbers will be pretty low.

Apart from home visits (and getting rather sunburnt on the way!) I've also been doing a bit of admin, like creating new timetables and organising the stationery store:

Organised cupboard in all its glory!

And on Friday I spent the first part of the morning like this:

Haha look at my sunburn - oops!

It was her first day and she was rather sad about being left by her mum, but she was ok in the end and even got brave enough to go and explore the playground. I saw her with an older boy who is from the same area and he took her by the hand and looked after her, it was so sweet. I have noticed that a lot of the older ones are so good at looking after the little ones, even if they're only a year or two older. I wonder if it's because once they have a younger sibling they are expected to help. It's lovely to see, anyway!

I shall leave you with a little video of some children having fun with tyres!