Today I got to help out at an English club in our town that just started! It is something I thought I would like to start or help with if I ever found one, and I was right. I had a lot of fun and look forward to next time. The former teacher in me was happy to see kids having fun learning.
A Peace Corps volunteer from Mexico City is here working with the local elementary school to teach them English. She told us she was able to get a computer for an English lab, but the problem with that is there are multiple keys to get to it and everyone has to be there at the same time. The condition of the classroom we were in was pretty good, but it lacked basic stuff like books in Spanish and English in basic levels. She had some computer notebooks where the kids could watch videos of English stories, but the speakers were so bad, no one could hear. I told her next week I would bring my portable computer speaker and she was so excited! I also brought her some kid books today and now better know what to take and keep an eye out for.
The kids were playing a fun sight word game.
Today there were 9 children aged 8 to 12. One boy I worked with did a great job of reading in English. She told me that some of the children are not able to read in Spanish. Another problem at the school is children may be able to read, but they are not asked comprehension questions (like who is the main character, what happens in the story?), so this is something she tries to teach at the club.
I plan to start attending the group regularly and see how I can help out. The kids were all so sweet and smart. It was a fun way to spend a little bit of my morning!
This week for our homeschool, we did some of our normal work. There are now 3 kids doing formal school - 2 of my boys are doing Ambleside Online Year 3 and my daughter is doing AO Year 1. We just started these new grades and introduced new books, like The Princess and the Goblin and Marco Polo for my boys.
A fun project that we did this week that was basically free was making yarn art. It is a good rainy day project, recycle project and a great project for working on coordination and fine motor skills. My 7 year old was able to do a pretty good job with little complaining, but the younger ones had a really hard time with it. They had a fun time and it kept them busy and off electronics for about an hour. I think next we will try their names.
To start out, you basically draw an image on a piece of cardboard (cut it off of an old box) and then cover it in glue inside the lines. Then you start with the yarn on the outside and wrap it all the way around, keeping it flat. You keep doing this all the way until you reach the middle.
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