pictures included this time! :)

Tomorrow is already the 1/2 way point of the term! I've been enjoying my class this term; trying to relax my teaching style a bit. I've realized it really doesn't matter if we get every single page of their workbooks done, as long as the children learn the material. I'm still a little frustrated with some of the curriculum and have decided instead of complaining about it, I'm going to improve it! Jess Russell (my TA this term) has helped me tremendously as she is very artistic and I am not. She has drawn " animal characters" to go with the alphabet letters (eg. Annie Ant, Zack Zebra) and we're making them into handwriting/spelling pages. It's been rather fun actually! Of course I can say that as she has done most of the work. She is now working on putting together some phonics pictures for me (ie. when 2 vowels going walking...). I'm scanning them into my computer and hoping to get them printed into booklets for my kids to use next year. I'll also be making up copies for the kids to use at the orphange and (finances permitting) some for teacher I wrote about in my previous post. Some day (maybe on my next furlough) I'd like to make up a social studies curriculum merging the Canadian ideas with the Zambian content. The books we are currently using are Zambian, but there just isn't enough in them to last for the whole year so I'm have to do a lot of supplemental work anyways. Other fun news... tomorrow is birthday party. The theme is "the WILD WEST". My students have been learning to do a square dance in music class and I got to see it for the first time today when they did a dress rehearsal. SO cute! I got little "cowboy hats" for the boys to wear and big bows for the girls to wear. i don't think i can post a video here but i got some pics of them posing. (i'll try and put the video on facebook if you have access to that). It should be a fun day tomorrow. :)