Rain! Rain! Rain!The weather today was no different from the previous rainy days. As our mini bus approached the school, we all took a gasp to find the playground had completely flooded. We waded through the muddy water and entered the classroom where we got a welcome of giggles and laughs from the children as we looked ridiculous in our brightly coloured raincoats. We sat down to join the children drawing cats and dogs and although most of their work looked like a load of scribbles with no resemblance of an animal, the children still received full praises from us with cries of “lasana” (Beautiful) and “hundai” (good). The dog theme was continued as we helped the children make origami dogs which they later used to skip around the classroom and sing a sinhala song about puppies.

The children were still very energetic from their sing song session, so we tried to tire them out by more singing! The usual “If you’re happy and you know it”, “Ring a ring a roses” and the famous “Hokey kokey” proved to be a success as the children exhaustedly returned to their seats to start sticking rolled up crepe paper and foil to a drawn out fish. The little rascals enjoyed it very much as it gave them the opportunity to get very messy with the glue!

We said our goodbyes to the children as they happily skipped off home still with bits of glue and crepe paper stuck to various parts of their clothing!

We were invited to lunch at one of the children from school’s house (Ishan). Once again we enjoyed a very filling lunch. As were about to leave after relaxing and listening to Bob Marley the floodgates opened! We waited for a few minutes but the torrential rain looked like it would not die down. We knew we would have to brave it as the kids would be waiting for us (the children are extremely keen to learn so come rain or shine they turn up). We put our raincoats on, rolled up our trousers, held our flip flops and made a dash for it! The muddy water was higher than our ankles making it very difficult to run along the street. My vision got blurred from the rain on my glasses, so the only thing that was guiding me was Natalie’s bright blue umbrella bobbling in front.

As we got closer to the school, we saw the children all crowded under umbrella laughing and screaming “run, run, Natalie’s the winner, Fiona’s second place and Fay’s third.”” At which point we all turned round just as Faye screamed “my flip flop” as we watched it get washed down the street by a newly formed river!

We settled down in the classroom, all looking like drowned cats and explained to the children the work for today, which got the response of “Bingo! Bingo!”. For the English hour, the children had to write a speech for the cultural show based on the previous weeks of English lessons. They described themselves, their family, hobbies, jobs, favourite animals, colours, food etc. The children really enjoyed reading their speeches out to us.

As a treat for working so hard on their speeches, we played a game of maths Bingo but the intensive version! The numbers were increased to 100 and the maths equations were much harder. We were very surprised how quickly the children were able to work the equations out mentally. One equation we gave as a joke thinking they would not know (9801 divided by 99=?) but within seconds a child shouted out the correct answer. We were quite surprised at how extremely bright the children were at working out mental arithmetic and also being able to shout the answers out in English. The children had a brilliant time playing Bingo and are already looking forward to seeing us tomorrow.