Yesterday, my wife told me she needed some help to work on a final project at her school. She teaches 1st Grade at a private school. She and her colleague, wanted to leave some colorful present to their students before they leave their work.
Like so many other teachers we know, my wife and her friend just can't afford the emotional roller coaster that teaching at a public or private institution has become here. They love their jobs, but teaching stopped being profitable or professionally rewarding.
As a token of their love for the institution and the kids they saw grow there, they decided to leave some colorful memory for future generations of students to enjoy. I was more than happy to help.
Some of the parents donated some of the oil paint. Other donated gasoline to clean the brushes. I bought a couple of brushes. We knew it would be a long afternoon, so we had a good lunch and got ready to work.
This is part of the playing area where kids share during recess. It's basically the parking lot of the house that has been functionaing as a private school for the last two decades.
AA beautiful mural was made a few years ago, but it is starting to peal off the wall already. It's a pity it may not be restored.
View of the whole area
They had a Twister board in mind and some sort of ABC worm. So, we marked a circle on cardboard to use as pattern for all the circles we would need.
We marked the areas
I regreted later to have taken off my shoes. It was like 100 degrees there.
They started painting some of the circles for the worm while I and my wife's colleague's son helped me with the Twister.
We worked realtively fast, but it was tiresome, especailly because of the heat.
Then, they started working of the wall. This is supposed to be a sort of roulette where kids would get the indications for their moves. We are not too sure about the mechanism. We still have to drill the wall for the handles. We were also thinking of building some sort of dices that kids can throw and get the colors for their hands and feet.
By 5 pm we were almost done, for the day, but we were exhausted. We will continue on Sunday.
The wall so far. Some pending final touches for Sunday.
The whole area now. Every circle of the worm will carry a letter of the alphabet in white.
We hope the kids will like it and enjoy it, even if we are not going to be around to see them.
Thanks for stoppoing by. I'll update the post on Sunday to show the final work.
Update:
We came today to finish the work. We added a hopscotch game.
And the letters to the abc 🐛, courtesy of
