Week 1 is Done!

We have survived the first week of term 2 and it went quite well! There have been many highlights from the week. I thought I would just enlighten you with a few of them. During our Bible time each morning, we have been talking about complaining. We have a different topic each week that we talk about from God’s Word and then the children have a memory verse to work on for the week that goes along with that topic. Our verse this week on complaining was Philippians 2:14-15, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe…”

I introduced the memory verse on Monday and asked the children write their verse out on a note card and to circle any words they did not know. On Tuesday we discussed the words they did not know. The overwhelming favorite for which word the children did not know was “depraved.” Before telling the children what the actual definition was, I asked them to tell me what they thought the word meant. One of the 4th graders quickly piped-up with….”depraved….it means he doesn’t pray!” Heather and I both got a huge kick out of that observation.

On Friday the kids had to recite their verse from memory to one of the teachers before they could go home for the day. The highlight of that activity was when one of the students misquoted the verse and instead of saying “shine like stars in the universe,” they said “shine like stars in the university.”

Also on Monday, I began talking about tourism during our EMS class with the 5th graders. I asked the boys what the word tourism meant. One of the boys obviously did not appreciate my annunciation an misunderstood the word. He quickly piped-up with “tourism…..like with guns?” He obviously thought I said terrorism, which then sparked a 15 minute rabbit trail about Apartheid in South Africa and the Civil War in America, and the World Wars.

It never ceases to amaze me when I hear the questions that come out of my students’ mouths. I was planning with Heather before the term began and she was telling me about some of the difficult and/or sensitive topics that she has to cover with our students during her Life Orientation class. She was telling me that she was going to have to a lot of research for some of the topics to be able to approach the topics from a Biblical perspective. She jokingly made the comment “why do I get to prepare all these lessons?” I quickly chimed back at her that I would gladly prepare the lessons for her because that meant that I would know what to say when they come to me to ask questions about the topics. We have noticed a trend with our students. Heather will teach on an interesting topic in the morning and give the children time to ask questions, however, they normally don’t ask any. Then, two or three hours later, when I have them and am teaching a different subject, they have had all day to process the information and they spring all their questions on me. Normally I am blindsided and Heather gets to laugh. I think for this term, I am going to have Heather tell me all of her sensitive and/or interesting topics so I also have time to prepare for the questions ahead of time. Improvisation only works for so many questions?.

I am so thankful that I was able to get planning done for this week ahead of time. Often times last term, because of being sick so much, I was planning from day to day. It was refreshing to go throughout this week knowing that all my lessons were already planned, I just had to do some review each night to make sure I was aware of what we were going to cover specifically on the next day. Having my planning done ahead of time this week worked so well that I was actually able to do some fun things after school like make dinner for Heather and I one night, make dinner for the interns, one of our relief workers, and her family one night, and even make an emergency trip to the chemist to fetch my new nebulizer one night. It’s amazing the things you have time for when you aren’t busy doing school work all the time?.

Praising God for a great week!

Tonya 🙂