Today we started the day in Hiththatiyia with the lovely pre-school children. On our arrival the children were playing with a variety of toys. This included some alphabet picture cards which two little boys were trading in a very business-like manner acting very grown up. I helped them to arrange them in order and learn some of the English words to match the pictures which they managed to pick up with ease. Afterwards, we helped them with an arts and crafts activity which involved colouring a piece of paper with brightly coloured pastels and then colouring over it using a black pastel. Once this was done, the children then scraped on pictures using a small stick into the black wax creating beautiful colourful patterns. The children really enjoyed this and had great fun making fish, seaweed and flower patterns which we taught them to say in English. The children even drew some lovely self portraits in stick-man form.

Afterwards, we created a mini perahera with the children which is a big cultural celebration in Sri Lanka of which we have all visited the Kandy and Dondra peraheras. These parades usually feature elephants, drummers and dancers. Unfortunately, we couldn’t invite an elephant to Hiththatiyia so we had to make do with dancing and drums which the children really enjoyed. They each found long sticks and put little colourful flowers along it. They then all marched in a line waving their flowery sticks to re-enact their very own Hiththatiyia perahera.

In the afternoon we carried out various activities to which the whole village was invited. We started firstly with an English class teaching about ‘Weather’. This was really interesting as many of the children had never seen snow or ice given the hot weather in Sri Lanka. Our lesson was helped by the thunder and lightening and heavy downpour which gave extra effect to our teaching. This is probably the only time I have been pleased to see the rain! Afterwards, we played various games with the children including ‘What time is it Mr Wolf’ which not only was a lot of fun but also learnt them the time slightly.

After school we all went to the local music shop to purchase various items for the school thanks to the kindness of Fiona’s auntie. We bought drums of various sizes and had the fascinating opportunity of seeing how they were made – with great skill! There were all kinds of weird and wonderful instruments – my favourite being a horn made from a shell. We saw a drumskin that was almost as big as me! We then went to the electrical shop and purchased a cassette player for the school as they have finally managed to get electricity for the building. The teachers chose one with flashing lights and bought some English speaking tapes to go with it. They were very grateful and delighted with all they had bought as it will make a real difference to lessons and I look forward to seeing the children enjoying using them.