This week Georgette and I have been teaching at pre-schools and running after school programmes in four different villages – Gandarawatte, Hiththatiya, Palena and Kirelawela.
It’s been both enjoyable and challenging finding ourselves teaching a huge range of ages, abilities and numbers in completely different environments. Today we went to last year’s school, Kirelawela. I think it was a particularly special day for Laura, who was visiting the school that she had helped fund last year for the first time this year. I found the two-storey building in an idyllic location right next to the sea very impressive and especially enjoyed the outdoor play area which is painted with bugs. The teacher was very friendly and it was lovely getting to know the ten children, especially since it was one girl, Ameesha’s, birthday. The teacher took the lead for the most part today, which made a change from the rest of the week. We helped the children learn the word ‘clouds’ as part of a craft activity sticking tissue paper onto a drawing, which they seemed to really enjoy. One girl in particular spent about twice as long on hers – she wasn’t being slow though, just a four-year old perfectionist!

Laura, Georgette and I led some singing, including ‘Row, row, row your boat’ and ‘the wheels on the bus’.  The children also sung ‘Happy Birthday’ to Ameesha, whose mother had prepared party bags for the whole class and enough cake for us to share! The main highlight of the day was probably when one little boy was opening the chocolate dessert in his party bag and feeding it to the girl next to him. Possibly one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen!

The teacher provided lunch for us in the school and in the couple of hours we had before the schools finished we wandered down to the beach only to see loads of fishing ships, complete with fishermen, either just on the sand or on their way back in the water. As usual the children appeared in dribs and drabs to the after-school programme we put on, but we attempted to cater for all and made snowflakes with them. They coloured these in, which gave us a good chance to test them on their colours. Unfortunately, there was some demand for dancing, which led to the three of us attempting such classics as the ‘YMCA’, ‘The Conga’ and ‘Saturday Night’. The older girls, along with us, found it hilarious, but the younger ones seemed to really enjoy copying the moves. We even had a go at some Sri Lankan dancing. I was amazed at how good some of the girls were, even the younger ones of about 6 or 7, and comparatively how awful I was! All in all today’s been really fun and I hope I get to visit Kirelawela again soon.