Day 14 - First Official Day in the Classrooms

Today was my first official day working with Dale. Yes, I have been working with him for the past two weeks, but today felt like my first real, official day because I was more involved in the classrooms this time. We went to Maria Elena today, which is where we did the Fun Day last week. We planned to do 4 classes in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. We only had time to do one class before recess, which I believe was a grade 1 or 2 class. We started out doing Bible Bucks, using the story from the Fun Day about the boy with the headache. I was surprised by how well the kids remembered the details of the story. All of the kids, actually, like in all of the classes. They were all able to answer all of the questions, even remembering that the boy sneezed 7 times before he woke up. I was impressed.

After the Bible Bucks, we told the story of Naaman, who was the captain of an army but had leprosy. He was sent to see Elisha, who sent him to dunk himself 7 times in the Jordan River. Basically, the moral of the story was about being humble or meek and not letting your pride get the best of you and allow you to get angry. After the story, we did an object lesson in which juice was poured onto a plate with a candle on it and when a cup was put over the candle, no liquid was inside the cup, but when the candle is lit and then the cup put over top, liquid is pulled into the cup, filling it. This represents how when we have the presence of Jesus in our lives, God comes in and fills us. After the object lesson, we played a game, girls vs. boys, in which they had to spell out the answer to different questions. Then we sang Trading My Sorrows, in Spanish, of course. And then we closed in prayer, which, in the first classroom, Dale suddenly called upon me to do. Ahhhhhhh! :O But I managed! Thankfully we had Lucia with us translating so she makes everything sound better for the kids :P

As I mentioned, we only got through one class before recess, so we just chilled on the steps while the kids ran around. At one point, as the kids were running by Dale, he'd reach out and grab them and start tickling them. The kids LOVED that and soon they were all darting in and out of Dale's reach, trying not to be caught by him. At one point, one of the girl's was pushing her friend towards Dale, so I grabbed her from behind and pulled her over to me and started tickling her. And of course, the kids absolutely loved that! Soon they were taunting me, getting close and then backing out of my reach. It was hilarious. And then some kids decided to be brave and try tickling me! There was one little boy that even climbed on my back at one point, so I stood up and ran around and spun him around a little, which he thought was a hoot. When I let him down, since I was already standing up, I decided to go chase some of the kids around, particularly the ones that would always dart out of my reach. Within minutes, I was suddenly surrounded by kids who were all tickling me! I was tickle-attacked! I was fighting them off in hordes! I was finally saved as one of the older boys grabbed my arm and pulled me back over to where the rest of our team was sitting, just in time for recess to end. I had a blast with those kids though, even if I was being crazy tickled (and if you know me, you know that I am super ticklish)!

Tickle attacked!

The rest of the classes pretty much carried out the same as the first class. We each took turns doing the story and the object lesson and the game. I got to do the object lesson twice, the story once, and the game I read the questions once, but all of the other times I helped the kids find the letters. Overall, it was a really good day. The kids were all well behaved and engaged. I absolutely loved it. If this is any indication of what my next 6 weeks here are going to look like, I'm in for a great time.

Me doing the object lesson 

Not much else happened today. I worked on one of my assignments for Graham and got that submitted. Then I finally got caught up on Once Upon A Time, so I'm all ready for the season finale this Sunday. Mostly I just introverted in my room for the night, which was nice. Tomorrow, Dale and I have to do some sort of internship mentoring thing with Eldon online around noon and then in the afternoon, we're hoping that we'll be able to buy and deliver stuff for the Feeding Program in the schools. I'm looking forward to helping out with that.

But for now, good night, good dreams, and hasta mañana!


~ Cass Haines ~