Weekly Update

Sawubona!

It's Friday, and thought I had better start writing my blog update for this week.

Monday I am in pre school, and I am now used to being used as a climbing frame! But when 10 kids decide to jump on you at once, your legs start to hurt a little bit. At pre school, we always start off with singing (in Siswati!!) and prayer time. I've pretty much learnt all the songs, as we sing them a lot through out the day, and they tend to be similar to the ones we sing at house group and in the community. And all of the them are in Siswati...

When I am at pre school Mon, Tues and Weds, I tend to do the alphabet, spellings and hand writing with the children. I took a parachute to the pre school and the children absolutely love it! They had never seen one before, so it was really funny watching their faces when I took it out the bag.

Wednesday is Culture day at the pre school so after snack time, we always sing traditional songs, and do Swazi dancing, which I'm getting good at! They use huge drums, and I am quite tempted to buy one to take home..but I have no idea how that's going to work..

Tuesdays we have cell group, which is made up of a complete mix of people from the UK, Ghana, Zambia, Swaziland, and Canada, so it's always interesting! Good food though, we get a feast when we go round to Pastor Augustine's, and we aren't allowed to go until the food is all gone. I've gone home feeling a bit sick sometimes - ate waaaay too much!

Yesterday (Thursday) was my first day as a class teacher at home school! Last week on the Thurs and Fri I was just assisting in the younger class. I now teach the older class.

So Weds after pre school I spent the rest of the day outside lesson planning (I felt like my mum but my tan is better than when she does it in the garden haha!). The school doesn't have a curriculum - though this is changing.

It is hard to know what level the children were at in my class as they have been given work for 8-10 year olds, and they don't have targets. So yesterday, I gave them a maths test, English comprehension, spelling and reading assessment and we had a science lesson! We now have lesson objectives and key words, and homework!

School days start at 8 and finish at 1, as they don't have a lunch break and in summer it is incredibly hot by this time. So Thurs afternoons I get to go into the community for the rural clinics. It always amazes me how far people travel to get there. Nearly all the clinics I have been to have been in the mountains, and people walk for hours to get there. Me and a guy called Sipho who works at TCMI here try and read stories to the children and pray with people. It is really helpful that he is there because my Siswati isn't that fluent yet.. The car said it was 30 degrees today!

Today (Friday) I taught in home school, but for the past week there has only been 1 child in the class as the boy is sick, and really quite weak. We did cookery this morning with Helen's class, English, P.E and spelling which seemed to go well :-)

Tomorrow I am either going to South Africa or Lavumisa in the south of Swaziland. Plans don't seem to come together right until the last minute!