Although I have had my share of emotional ups and downs throughout my teaching days (sometimes all in one class), what I'm actually sharing about today is one class where my prepa kids (Kindergarten) learned some different words for emotions. What spurred this is my need to share the pictures they drew that were their versions of what I drew on the board, and it was then solidified by the pictures I took of them displaying said emotions when I made the mistake of pulling out my iPod to take a picture of the board... Any time I take out a photo-taking device, they lose all self-control and crowd in front of me, demanding I take their pictures. As much as I love it, it makes it hard to get them focused back on the learning they're supposed to be doing.
So, here are the 6 emotions I decided to teach them on: happy, sad, mad, scared, tired, and excited. After I drew them on the board, I read them to them a few times, adding a lot of motions and emotions into my miming of the different emotions. They of course also got into this, which made every one hilarious, primarily because one of the girls makes the BEST facial expressions EVER. She's so incredibly expressive in every face she makes that I often laugh in class at her confused face that shows up every time she's not sure what I said, which happens a lot at this point.
Here's my drawing on the board, in all of its artistic glory:
Here are the ones done by the girls:
All of which I loved, but then I got to Leo's, the lone boy in the class, and got this wonderful nugget:
Most of it is standard for him: big, sort of messy writing with quickly drawn pictures just in pencil because if he can get away with spending time doing anything involving crayons he will, but the face for "excited" just got me because you can't get much more excited than that, even though it looks more like a monster being set free.... Love it, at any rate. :D
So, then I pulled out my iPod to get pictures of their drawings and mine, and they started dancing and darting wildly while they grabbed one another and asked for me to take pictures of various combinations of all of them. I am infinitely thankful that they are all friends and don't ever exclude anyone. It's beautiful. So, here are the pictures I snapped of them:
Analia
This is the biggest little tomboy I've ever met (favorite color blue, hates pink, loves soccer, hates ballet, loves My Little Pony) and always has to pose for her individual shots. I've been asked twice if she's my daughter... I wish it were so.
Camila
She is the youngest in my class, having just turned 5 in December, and also has a bad habit of falling asleep in class... But she's a sweet girl and absolutely loves being the baby in her family, and in class.
Debora
The oldest and tallest by a head, she's 6 and has a pretty good handle on this whole "English thing." She's quick to speak up and take wild guesses, which I love, but she's also quick to cry when she's upset, which can be hard to appropriately respond to when she's crying because she forgot to do her homework and I really don't care that she didn't do it that day, so long as she eventually gets it done. :)
Nerea/Nicole
She responds to Nerea but always writes Nicole on her papers, so who knows with this one. She's my super expressive girl who constantly makes me laugh with the faces she manages to make. She's goofy, but her pronunciation is probably the best in the class, when I can get her to focus enough to answer.
Leo
This was the best picture I had of him, and it might be the best picture I have, period. He has the super-awkward-while-trying-to-look-slick look down. Although he's usually quiet, when he does speak, he knows the right answer, or is so close he gets a high-five anyway.
So, those are the characters in my class. They are quite the crew... So after I managed to snap a few individual photos, they gathered together for a class picture and I had them show me the different emotions they had just learned. They were of course having too much fun with it, so some of them are laughing on the non-happy emotions, but that's ok. We all had fun, and it hopefully solidified the lesson for them at least a little more. Here they are:
Happy
Sad
Mad
Scared
Tired
Excited
So, that was one adventure I had. There are a lot more where that came from, but most of them are not so well documented. I am recording interviews with my first graders every week, so once I get a few more of those I can edit them together and post them. I'll probably wait til the end of the school year to show how much they've improved, but might post a few highlights along the way.
Thank you muchos to everyone who continues to pray for me and support me as I journey on the path that God has for me here in Honduras. I will certainly try to update this more often, but won't make any promises... ;) God is getting ready to do some big things here in Honduras, and I'm excited to be a part of it.
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