Monday and Tuesday

Since most of the volunteers have left, Daniel and I decided to teach the little kids in the afternoon instead of doing construction. Today we had six children between the ages of three and six. After lunch, we spent some time planning the two hours that we were to be in charge of the children. At three, they started pouring in the school. At about 3:10, we began with a name game. We tried have the kids say their name and then an animal that began with the same letter, but realized that was asking a little too much, so we just did favorite animals. We then moved to the table, where we drew for a long time. We had blank paper and some outlines to be colored in, and all the kids wanted to color in the house, so I spent a good bit of time copying the house outline over and over again. The two littlest kids are angels, and two of the bigger boys are little devils. When they tired of drawing, we brought them on the floor and played Indian chief and duck-duck-goose. Indian chief was a little too hard for them—when they were the leader, they wouldn’t change their actions, rendering it impossible to guess who the leader was. Just as we began to lose their attention, it was break time.


For the next twenty minutes, we incessantly played jump rope, while Daniel played soccer with some of the boys. The yard behind the school is covered in short yellow grass, and with the four o’clock sun and the piles of rocks, it looks very post-apocalyptic. When we couldn’t count to seventeen anymore, it was 4:20, and time for class to resume. We took the little ones to the dead-end street that the school is on, and chalked it up for the next thirty minutes. The children traced Daniel and me, each other, and drew and wrote various other things. When the kids lost interest, we took them back inside, sat on the floor, and sang a word-less Nature Camp song, Dum-Dum-Dada, which is active and predictable. The kids took well to the game, and we played for a while. We ended the day with Duck-Duck-Goose, always a favorite.

Tuesday went much the same; I took class in the morning, and Daniel and I taught the little ones again. We were told to do more teaching, so we gave the kids a letter-writing worksheet, which they excitedly filled out, and we had them run from letter to letter written in the street in chalk, which they really enjoyed. We played more games, drew a lot, and played more Dum-dum-dada.

After class, we stayed at El Nahual and watched Todo Sobre Mi Madre, an amazing Spanish film. After dinner, I spent some time at the internet café, and then went home, ate dinner, did my homework, and slept.