Children Make Me Laugh

My second day was just as good as my first! My kids are absolutely adorable and all of the teachers are so friendly, I feel like I have known them forever. Today I had a little bit more contact with the kids. The schedule of my classroom is so different from one in the states. Education is important, but they offer a large amount of time to other areas of activity such as music, art, foreign language (Indonesian), recess, and much more. My students have several different backgrounds - for example, one of the little boys was home schooled for his first few years of school by his mum (no, I didn't spell it wrong) and apparently she didn't do too good of a job. He often misses school, too. Another little boy just moved here from South Africa two weeks ago and has major trouble with language and writing. He seems to reverse a lot of letters in words and gets the sounds of "i" and "e" mixed up which cause him to have grammatical errors. One of the little girls in the class is from Scotland and she blows me away with her work! Today, the students were brainstorming words about pirates and she came up with words that I had never heard of... and they were right! I mean, I thought my vocabulary was bad before, but this little Scottie showed me up! Although these kids bring something to the table that not every classroom has, it will be a task for me to come up with activities and lessons that accommodate each student. Another difference about the school is that each student owns a bucket hat (Gilligan-like). They have to wear it every time they step foot outside due to the sun's intensity. They are so precious bee bopping around in them. I love this little girl that has a different hat from the rest of the kids. Her's is more of a sun hat and she cracks me up when she puts it on and jumps around with her flighty-self. Such a big hat for a little girl! I also think all of my co-workers enjoy teasing me about the variations of the Australian language to the American language. I learned what a texta is today. Any guesses???? It's a magic marker. Who would have guessed?! The students also use wind-ups. Those are crayons that are in a plastic, pen-shaped containers that they wind up to use. And my favorite of the day was when one of the kids asked to use a rubber. He was referring to an eraser, but it caught me off guard and I about died!

Friday the school is having a Faction Carnival which is like a Field Day back home. All of the students in the school are divided into four different groups and work towards earning faction points throughout the school day. These points are their way of managing behavior. At the end of the term, the team with the most points gets a party. I can't wait for Friday! I just hope it doesn't rain.

P.S. There is a girl in my class that looks JUST like I did when I was young. She has the dirty blonde hair, big round, green eyes, big teeth, a lisp, and she holds her mouth the way I do. I can't help but love her!