Wednesday 5-7-14

Wednesday 5-7-14

                The power has been out all night. The kids started waking up at 6am complaining about it being too dark (I usually leave the bathroom light on in the hallway and use that as a nightlight), but with the power being out there was nothing I could do. So we were early to rise. I got them some animal crackers with Nutella as a morning snack so I can get them to take their anti-malaria pill; just enough so the meds won’t hurt their stomach since they eat breakfast with the rest of the kids at school. Time comes when Joan is usually here to get the kids and walk to school. It came and past, with no one coming. It is raining outside so maybe she didn’t want to do the little extra walking in the rain, which is understandable. Ayla began to freak out. She doesn’t want to walk to school by herself (meaning her and Jove). I agreed to walk them to the road again, which is just down the long driveway, then all they have to do is walk a short way down the hill and the school is right there. Jove kept trying to reassure her “It’s okay Ayla, I will walk you, I know the way.” It was very sweet. I told him how proud I was of him and what a big boy he has become now that he is five. He liked that a lot. Ayla grudgingly went with him, yelling that she loved me over and over. Poor little thing. But she did it, so I am proud of her also. It is harder for her, and some think I don’t push her hard enough, but I am just not that kind of mom. I don’t want to be the best friend parent, but I also don’t want to be the kind of parent that my children will be afraid of and despise. Hopefully I am doing okay and not going too much on the soft side because I know I am not too much on the other.

                Off to school we walked and luckily the rain and greatly lightened up. Std.1 was ready to go. Same sequence of items happened, that happens every day; math flash cards, reading out of the book, correcting the things they are mispronouncing while reading and getting into detail on the issue words and topics after reading has finished. Then we work on other types of math and English. Today I had dice and Mamaliz had the beads. I give each kid a handful of dice and then they have to add them all up. So they look for tens to make it easier then figure out the remaining. The problem with this is, is that when in pairs there are a few that will slide by without doing any work and when singly there are many that will flip the dice when they think no one is looking in order to have nothing but 5’s, 4’s, and 6’s in order to make nothing but tens. They are a bunch of cheaters J. We ended by doing some sentences where the words are all mixed up and the kids have to correct it. i.e. dog the brown lazy was. We also did a word scramble which all the children loved. All that is except my Ayla. Poor thing isn’t used to doing these whereas Mamaliz has done them with the rest of the class many times. Ayla gets so worked up so easily about so many things. She started crying because she couldn’t figure it out. Then at the end when we were correcting her we had all the students raise their hand at the appropriate time to show who got what score. Ayla still got 6/10. There was one child that got 0/10, and yet Ayla still cried because she just couldn’t get them all. That is my little perfectionist.

                Std.3 went well. They wouldn’t stop pushing to be first in line for the math flash cards so I decided I would start with the back of the line. When we went to do a different set of math flash cards they did it again and so, again I went and started with the back of the line. Those kids are just so competitive that it hurts their learning. I did story time with the little ones at 11:00. We read four books, one of which was “the very hungry caterpillar” they loved it. I am working on picking books out with fewer words in them so that it may be a little easier for them to understand since they are just now gaining English as a language. After stories we sang a few songs. Jove was mad because he didn’t get to pick one of the animals that were on Old Mac Donald’s farm. So he began saying he wouldn’t play Simon says when we started that. I told him he had to leave the classroom if he was going to have a bad attitude. All of these students pay a lot of money (for them) every year to be able to go to this school because of how poor the government schools are. I will not have him act as if being there is a horrible thing when so many want it so badly. He was not happy, but after Simon Says, I went and explained to him why he had to leave and about the kids wanting to be there, and he apologized and calmed down. Then back to std.3 I went. At the end of class we did some 20 questions. They are really funny with that. I even got a video of them trying to guess “water”.

                Time for lunch. I told the kids I would go to lunch with them today. So I went early with a few of the std. 3 kids to make sure the matrons were doing their job and getting all the food there on time. That way as soon as the kids get to the lunch room all they have to do is sit down, pray, and then eat. When eating time came around I noticed Jove was not eating. I went over, sat next to him so I could ask him what was going on. The poor little guy was burning up. Silly kid was wearing a sweater and a coat, so I stripped those off of him and he kept getting hotter over the next half hour. So I had to bring him home and get some meds in him. Ayla was not happy about this because it meant I could not stay during play time and watch her jump rope and whatnot. Over and over I explained that he was sick and I had to get him home. She is reverting so much. She just can’t stand it to be out of sight of me. It always comes down to her thinking I am not going to come back and how much she misses daddy. I know I need to do something about this, but I don’t want to make the situation any worse by being too hard about it. After all, it is coming about because she is a completely different place and her dad just left and she is scared I am going to leave her. But Jove and I get home and I lay him on the couch, give him a few Tylenol and within a minute (literally) he was sound asleep. My poor sick little guy. Jove slept for about a half an hour, then woke up and said he was hungry. He ate two apples then fell back asleep for just under 4 hours. He is just like his daddy sometimes. Asa does nothing but sleep as well when he gets sick. Better than whining I suppose. He woke up enough to eat some dinner of fried rice and beanie weenies, but only ate the beanie weenies. Ayla did great coming home from school without Bibi (Bibi had to stop by the hospital to pick up some medicine). She was very sweet and stayed very quiet while Jove slept. Finally some friends came over and so she went outside to play. Mamaliz did the reading group early, which was nice because it meant quiet house for the evening. I got the kids ready for bed and even I was asleep by 8:30. There is just very little to do when there is no power, I just hope it comes on through the night. I would really like to have internet back so I can Skype and check email.