Cute animal pictures!

As promised, here are some of the pictures that the children drew of the animals they saw on safari. I love the way children draw! There's such character in these - look out for the giraffe with just a long line for a neck!

I like the shell on this tortoise!

Can you see the baby baboon on its mother's back?

Fearsome cheetah!

More end-of-term fun!

The fun didn't stop after Wednesday's trip to the safari park! In fact we had a fun-filled last day of term too, although it turned out slightly differently from how we'd planned! The lovely Su who organised the trip also booked a bouncy castle to come to the school for the day. It arrived and was set up, and the bouncing began! However, not very long afterwards... the power went off! Disaster!

However, all was not lost. The guys who brought the bouncy castle had so many other tricks up their sleeves! First, they painted the children's faces:

They played loads of games with the children, such as 'What's the time Mr Lion/Mr Cheetah/Mr Tiger?', which went down very well, as you can see from this little video clip:

They also put on a puppet show, which the children (and adults!) loved!

We all had a fun time, despite the lack of power. It was nice to have time just sitting and playing with the children on the last day. Here's a cheeky little one who climbed on my knee and stole my hat!

At the end of the day we gave each child a knitted teddy bear which had been donated by some very kind ladies back in the UK. The children were really happy - and we saw one who willingly handed over all her other things to her mum but kept a very tight hold on the bear!

Oh, and one other postscript to the day: for various reasons there was a muddle over paying the bouncy castle guys, but later they said that they didn't want any payment, it was their way of giving something back! So hopefully we may book them for another day of fun for next term!

Mahali goes on safari!

The last Wednesday of term was an exciting day! I mentioned a while ago that we were taking the children on a trip thanks to some lovely people from church - when their little boy had his first birthday they asked for donations for Mahali instead of birthday presents. They raised enough money for a great trip plus some other treats! We went to the national park where there is an animal orphanage and also a safari walk - we had a brilliant day! Here are some photos for you to enjoy.

The children lined up so nicely ready to go on the walk

We're going on an animal hunt!

Look! A giraffe!

 The ostriches decided to help the giraffe smarten up!

What's next?

We love the baboons!

Baboon family

Mum and baby

Baby eating fruit

On the walkway

A tortoise - but where's its head?

Baby cheetah!

Yes? What do you want?

Look! What are those?

Albino zebra

Looking at the rhino.... and more baboons!

Framed rhino

Spot the leopard!

Hello Mr Crocodile! What fine teeth!

The babies spent a while in the playground

We love the slide!

We've had a great time....

... although some of us are tired out!

Time to get back on the bus

Even the bus is exciting!

Bye! We had a wonderful day!

As I said, it was a fantastic day and the children thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Most of them would never have seen any of these animals before, even though they live so close to the national park, and it was great to see their reactions! The next day we did some follow-up at school, showing the children pictures of our trip and talking about the different animals. Then the older ones made little books with drawings of the animals, and the younger ones coloured pictures. I'll try to post some photos of their drawings soon - they were very cute!

Thanks to Jon for some of the photos! And to everyone who came and helped make the trip a success!

Quick update

I have so many posts to do, but a combination of things seem to have got together and plotted to stop me... namely the computer dying, the borrowed computer being slooooow, power being pretty awful for the last week or two, going down with a cold and generally feeling pretty under-the-weather.... Anyway, I will try to sort through the million or so photos that I want to select a few from to show you, dear readers, and get them onto my blog in the next week or so. At least I still have two more weeks of the Easter holidays with not a huge amount planned!

In the meantime here's some cute pictures of the children during the last week of term!

Girl carrying Makka Pakka Kenyan-mama-style!

Boys playing together

Jon entertaining some littles (or is it the other way round?!)

Learning to thread beads

We can thread and match colours!

'Teacher Jon' helping a group

Boys having fun!