Picnic Time...

During our school vacation, I've been teaching a class to the children of our staff.  It's geared for children in first - third grade.  The purpose is to help keep the kids' skills sharp during vacation and to keep them immersed in English.  I had the idea for the class as a way to give back a little to our staff.  It is my gift to them.  When I first started mentioning it to some of the staff, their first question was, "How much will it cost?"  Since it's a gift, I quickly made sure that they knew there's no cost at all, that I wanted to do this as a blessing to them and their kids.

We met for a couple of weeks in December and then started back again in January.  Class meets 3 times a week, for an hour-and-a-half.  It's supposed to be fun. I mean, who wants to be stuck in a classroom for hours and hours during vacation?  14 children were invited to be part of the class, but occasionally I had as many as 18 kids in the classroom as some 4th graders and kindergartners "sneaked" in.  (I couldn't say 'no'.)

Class rules are simple and each child has them memorized: #1 ~ No speaking Spanish.  #2 ~ Have fun!  Well, they all seem to do just fine with Rule #2, but the 'No speaking Spanish' part has been a bit more of a struggle.  During each class, we spend some time talking, reading, doing math, and playing games.

About two weeks ago, we started reading "The Wind in the Willows".  In the very first chapter, Mole and Rat go on a picnic, so one of the girls asked me if we could have a picnic together before our class was over.  I thought that was a great idea!  Ashley and I began planning the picnic and kept it a secret from the class for a few days before telling them about it. Since this week was the last week of class, we had our picnic on Monday.

I tried to have our food be fairly close to that of Mole and Rat, so we had fried chicken, cold ham (sandwiches), vegetables and  watermelon.  We had jugo de tamarindo, tamarind juice, instead of lemonade, but no one seemed to mind.  They also didn't mind that I chose not to serve tongue, even though Mole and Rat ate that.

So here's a picture from our picnic.  Some of the kids had left before I thought to get out my camera.