The New School...

On Thursday morning, a school from the slum came to have their integrated schools programme with us...

We were expecting group of about 25-30 children aged 6-9 years old. We had asked the school to do a 2-week rotation because we only have enough staff workers for two groups, so didn't want more than 15 or so children in each group. So the first 30 children were coming this week.....well 48 children turned up....which meant having very large groups of 24 children in each!

 We started off well, with having them all start in the classroom, introducing ourselves, the rules of the community centre, and then dividing them into groups t make name badges which were either green or orange so we could tell if a child was in the wrong group! They made their badge very quickly, the we sang some songs, but we didn't feel very prepared. The school bought some monitors (like classroom assistants) along, and they were really helpful and sang some songs too.

I am not able to run a group on my own yet because of the language and not knowing enough (and the children are not use to foreigners speaking portuguese so they found me hard to understand!). So I had a worker to help translate me. We went to the small sports court and played two different team games, and the children really enjoyed them. Next it was toilet and drink break.

We then went to the park for the remaining time they had. The children were really good, as it was difficult in the park as it is not really designed for 24 children at one time. So the children formed a queue and waited for the swings, or played on the other things.

The morning went well....but it was exhausting!

Next week we are going to go to the school and have a meeting and discuss how it went and talk to them about reducing the number of children (like we had originally discussed!). Plus get to know the children more. The school are having to pay for a coach to get the children from the school to the Lighthouse and they cannot afford to do it all the time, so are waiting to find out if they have secured funding, so through April we will just be going to the school, and being involved in the programme they have. They want the programme at the Lighthouse as they are really limited for space at the school.