Anecdotes from This Week

We started this month's new theme this week, food and healthy eating. Today I did a mystery food bag activity with my class. I put one item in at a time and let the kids put their hands in to touch the item without looking. First I put uncooked pasta, then mushrooms, then broccoli and finally a cucumber. We talked about touch and smell. I let them pass around the items after they were revealed. At the end I asked them to pass everything back to me and when I put out my hand for the uncooked pasta I had one little girl open her mouth and start spitting pieces into my hand. I had specified not to eat the other items but didn't realize I had to also tell them not to eat the uncooked pasta...

Part of our new theme board (not going to lie, I'm pretty proud of this):

My afternoon class has been really into playing doctor this week, with me as the patient (lucky me ha). It's a lot of poking and prodding my arms and legs for "injections" and telling me that I'm "too much sick" and there's "lots of blood". The girls told me that I was "too much sick" because I didn't listen to my mom. They asked what my mom's name was and I told them it's Susie. They said "ohhhh" and really liked the name and kept saying "You should have listened to Susie!" One girl then asked what my dad's name was and I told her Tom.  She gave me a strange look and said, "Tom? That's suuuuuch a weird name" hahaha. Keep in mind the most common name in Dubai is Mohammed so there aren't a whole lot of Toms walking around. Today one of the girls was asking when her mom was coming and then asked me when my mom was coming, and another one goes "Yeah, where's Susie?" haha. 

I had a conversation with the same girl the other day and she told me about a friend who was being naughty at home and not listening to her nanny. I said "Oh, I see" and she goes "Um no you don't, how could you see? You don't live in their house", I laughed and explained that "I see" is an expression that means I understand. She thought about it, looked at me carefully and said, "No, I don't think so".  I told her we'd agree to disagree on it. I told Bea the story and today she told me she was having a conversation with the girl and after Bea said something the girl said "I see" hahaha, these kids are like sponges.

Here I am with my class, getting an "injection" in my face and my hair cut at the same time, just a regular day with the Penguin class...

Speaking of sponges, I overheard a girl in my class trying to tell her classmates to share toys. They were ignoring her so she started pointing to her ears and saying "Listen!", my jaw dropped because that's exactly what I do, she even sounded like me! And this girl speaks Farsi so it's good to know that's what she's picked up from me in English haha.

We did have some kids that really left their "listening ears" at home this week. We had a rough day at football the other day and the coach was getting frustrated with a couple of the kids who were just running around, acting crazy. He sat one down for a little chat and then the boy started throwing a tantrum and asking where his mommy was. The coach goes, "Well, we live in Dubai so I'd say mommy's probably out spending daddy's money" haha, the adults all got a pretty good laugh out of that. And knowing this boy's mom and the age difference between mommy and daddy I'd say that's exactly what she was most likely doing:)

Overall it was a good week though and although the afternoon kids are a bit challenging they're real characters and have really grown on me a lot. When I walked by them today with my class they started yelling out "Miss Jennifer, I love you!"and "Me too, I love you too!" Even the naughtiest ones and the boy who "can buy his own stickers" haha, it was pretty cute:)