Teacher Tammy's Blog

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” –1 Peter 1:3

There have many different activities at CSC over the last few days to remember and celebrate Jesus’ resurrection!  He is RISEN!  Praise the Lord!

On Wednesday, we had an Easter program at school!  We sang praise songs to the Lord, watched several performances, and played some games related to Easter and Jesus’ resurrection.  It ended with announcing the winner’s of the coloring contest!  Here are the winners!

On Sunday, many of our kids performed in the morning church service.  Below is a picture of them up on stage.  It was hard to get a good picture because they were so far away.  Almost all of the kids in white are our kids!

After the church service, each of the houses had their own Easter egg hunt.  The kids had so much fun searching through the bushes and around the yard for the eggs!  Here are a few of my favorite pictures from that event!

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This preschooler came to school sporting a hair style just like his older brother’s!  

I’m not sure what was happening with this next photo, but I found him lining up to go home for lunch wearing a swimming cap and goggles.  I still have no idea why, but it was a fun photo!

This little boy is our newest addition to CSC.  It took a while for me to get a smile out of him, but he’s starting to warm up to me now!!  I love this picture!

Just a few of the darlings you can find on our playground!!

And a really cute moment, I caught on video!  God is so good!!

Friction, motion, and static electricity are just a few of the topics we’ve been learning about lately in science!  It is EXTREMELY difficult to teach about static electricity in Cebu’s very humid climate.  There are no flannel sheets to show off sparks, rubbing your feet on the carpet doesn’t do anything, and even rubbing balloons in your hair doesn’t always produce the desired effect.  But along with the help of the air conditioned library, we have been attempting to see or feel a little bit of static electricity.  The kids were extremely excited on Friday when the balloons finally “worked”.

Friction and motion are easier topics to tackle!  After discussing them for a week, we had some fun with the “tablecloth” pull.  We started simple with just a small piece of paper and a marker.  Soon we moved up to using a large piece of paper and several dishes, bowls of water, pencil boxes, and other things.  The kids loved it, but I had to make sure to tell them NOT to try it at home!!

Last week I invited two of our girls who will be leaving soon over to my house for an evening.  They each got to invite one friend to join them!  We picked up some Jollibee for dinner and camped out on my balcony to watch a movie while we ate.  Good food, a great view, a funny movie, lots of laughter and four precious girls…it was a great night!

Last Friday was SRA Day at school!  SRA is our reading curriculum so it includes reading, writing, and spelling!  We spent the morning having some fun reviewing things we had learned in SRA throughout the year.  It started off with one student from each level sharing why they like SRA.  Then we had a cheer competition.  The children were divided into four groups and each group had 10 minutes to create their own cheer about SRA or reading.  It was cool to see what they came up with.

After the cheering competition was the spelling contest!  The kids took turns writing letters or words on the white board as a review of things they had learned.  They also drew pictures that related to some of the themes our classes had studied.  Some of the older kids went up and explained how their pictures related to the theme.

The final part of the program involved several presentations by our kids.  The Level A students performed sang “The Alphabet Song”.  Jaime and Pretchy each did a beautiful job sharing poems about reading!  Shiela & Rowena sang a duet of “America the Beautiful”, a song they learned in one of their reading units.  Then three of our Level C students shared stories they had written during class.

Here are some more pictures from our exciting day!

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There are always lots of activities going on at the school.  Conferences, morning meetings, and programs.  It has been a very busy last few weeks.  Here are some of the programs we’ve had lately!

Level A2 Morning Meeting:

Two weeks ago Level A2 presented a morning meeting about different types of weather!  They did a cute skit in which a boy took pictures of the kids acting out all of the seasons.  That was followed up with the students explaining several different types of weather.  Then they danced to the song “Beautiful Day” before closing up the morning with a game.  For the game, two kids had to form a house with their arms.  A third child sat inside as the “baby”.  Whenever there was a storm, the houses fell apart and everyone had to run around to form a new house with a new baby.  There was a bit of confusion during every “storm”, but lots of laughter as well!

Science & Math Day:

Last Thursday, our school held our annual Science & Math Day.  The program was split into two different parts.  The first part was the math quiz bowl.  The kids were all quite excited about it and many had asked their teachers in advance to PLEASE help them practice.  Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, number comparison, and fractions were just a few of the topics covered.  They all did a great job and it was fun to see the teamwork and encouragement that went on within the teams!  The second part of the program included presentations from each of the science classes.  Group 2 shared about plants and how they grow!  Group 3 explained potential & kinetic energy.  Then they used a roller coaster to demonstrate those types of energy.  Group 4 showed examples of energy transformation!  After all of the science presentations, the kids were clapping and spontaneously yelled out, “Science rules!!”  It’s fun to see their love for science!  The day ended with two math dances put on by our older kids!  Here is a short video that we showed about group 4’s energy creations. They had to create something that would move a Ping-Pong ball as far as possible!

Level B Morning Meeting:

Last Friday, Level B presented their morning meeting.  It started off with the girls performing a fun dance to the song “Show Jesus” by Jamie Grace.  Then they did a cute skit about camouflage.  The rabbit kept running into things that were hidden in the grass, trees, and flowers!  The program ended by acknowledging the March birthday celebrants!

Check out more pictures from these events!

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Thursday was Valentine’s Day!  The kids had been telling me all week that they were going to give me a “valentine’s day” (cards).  As soon as the kids walked into the school gate in the morning, they passed out letters to the teachers!  So fun!  Later in the day, we had a little party in our classroom and made some valentine cards to pass out to the kids’ friends, aunties, uncles, and teachers.

The Level C girls decided to make necklaces for the teachers.  Here is a picture of the Level C teachers sporting their valentine’s!

Thanks to some visitors, we had some of the conversation heart candy!  I passed out a few of them as Valentine’s Day messages to the kids.  I gave one of our 11-year-old girls one that said, “You Shine”.  Later that afternoon, she came back to my classroom and handed me a flower.  She said, “This is for you Teacher Tam!  You are so very shiny!”  So cute!  I love our kids!

One of the best times to hang out at CSC is from 3:30 to 5 in the afternoon (at least on school days)!  It is playtime for all of the kids and the yard becomes full of activity and laughter!  On a fairly normal day, a basketball game is going on at the far end of the driveway and a soccer game is going on in the middle of the yard.  Scooters, waveboards, and bikes race up and down the driveway and sidewalks.  Recently, rollerblades have been added to the mix!  The swingsets and monkey bars are often full of the younger kids.  Some of the older kids like to hang out on the house steps just talking.  Gymnastics, rubber band games, and tag are just a few of the other activities you’d see around!

Figuring out the Rollerblades

Friends and Family!

Creativity at its finest- glasses made of banana leaves and sticks!

Teamwork

Friday was our school’s annual Sportsfest!  The kids have been counting down to this since Christmas break!  They have even been practicing in the mornings before school by jogging around the yard.  Although it looked a little iffy Friday morning, the rain held off all morning and only sprinkled a little in the afternoon.  And the cloud cover helped keep us SLIGHTLY cooler than normal!  :-)

A few of the highlights for me were…

• The Limbo!  I love watching the kids do the limbo!  The younger ones make me laugh as some of them don’t quite get the rules about not touching the ground and crawl underneath.  Oops!  Then there are those that can go incredibly low.  Marko won for the 3rd year in a row!  The rope was down to only 24.5 cm above the ground.  That’s less than a foot!  In the oldest Limbo group, I was shocked that the last 4 contestants were 3 of our older boys (Jonjon, Argei Kem, & James) and only 1 girl (Margie).  In the past, the older girls have normally ruled the limbo roost, but not this year.  I was amazed at how low some of the older boys managed to go!  
• The Hula Hoop!  Our kids continue to be awesome hula hoopers!  (The other day I saw one of our boys waveboarding and hula hooping at the same time.)  To end our hula hoop contests, we have to have the kids walk, run, walk backwards, or walk sideways otherwise the contests could go on forever. This year the winners of the different levels were Mark (5), Lerma (5), Jovienel (7), Jocelyn (11), and Maricris (13).  Probably my favorite one to watch though was Jaimaica (4).  She is such a tiny little thing, but she sure can hula hoop…she came in 2nd in her group!
• The High Jump!  Our champion high jumpers this year included Lemuel, Denmar, Mae Ann, Margie, and Jonjon.  But, second placer Jaime was my favorite to watch!  He was the smallest in his group, but he sure could launch himself into the air!  By the end he had jumped over a rope that was nearly as tall as he was!
• The Egg Toss!  All of the kids 10 and above got to participate in a raw egg toss!  It is a lot of fun for everyone else to watch too!  This year our eggs had some incredibly hard shells.  I can’t count how many times the kids missed or dropped the eggs and they didn’t break.  Some eggs bounced and rolled 10 to 15 feet without breaking.  But, eventually, all of the eggs did break.  Manny and Jocelyn both tried to catch their eggs above their heads and ended up with raw egg in their hair.  There was lots of laugher over that!  Brothers, Ardian and Argei Kem, were the champions of the egg toss!

There were many other contests throughout the day including the 50m dash, jump rope, 3-legged race, sack race, hurdles, running long jump, peso toss, the frisbee toss, and tug-o-war.  We ended the day by handing out the awards for the top athletes, best cheerers, and the 1st place team.  The all-around top athlete awards went to Jonjon and Margie!  The Blue Team took the prize for 1st place!  What a fun and enjoyable day!

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We’ve had some cool days here lately!  I laughed as all of the kids paraded into school on Wednesday morning in their long sleeves.  Admittedly, I had also packed my sweatshirt for the trip to school.  It was probably about 79 degrees out, but it sure felt cool!

As part of a preschool activity, the kids made oatmeal bars and sold them to the teachers  They were so darling asking us to buy them that it was impossible to say no!  Plus, the bars were delicious!

On Friday morning, my reading class went on our annual buffalo hunt!  We were reading a story about the way the Native Americans hunted the buffalo, and it culminated in our buffalo hunt.  The kids have been looking forward to this all year!  Here are some of the pictures from the hunt!

On Friday afternoon, we had a farewell for Auntie Lindsay’s mom who was visiting.  It took place in the middle of play time so we ended up with a parking lots of sorts as all of the kids “parked” their toys in one place.  Jacob was the guard for all of the scooters, bikes, and waveboards!

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