Today Sarah Phil and I went to the Gandarawatte Preschool, which was built by the project in 2008.

It was the first visit here for all of us, and I know we all genuinely enjoyed the day. We began by singing all the usual songs, the “Hello song”, “12345 Once I caught A Fish Alive”, and” Alice the Camel”. Then we covered animals using Emma’s much sought after flashcards, and played “Down in the Jungle”, a game which Sarah made up, and the kids loved it, really getting involved, and all stumbling over each other to do the animal impressions.

We used foam cut outs of butterflies and flowers, and added colourful stickers to them for our art activity, and attached them together to make them 3D. Even the teacher asked to do one! We had tea at the Monks house in the village, and then managed to pass the hour just by playing with the kids, spinning them around, singing Round and Round the Garden, and Phil playing football with the boys.

Our Afternoon with the afterschool children was one like I have not experienced yet in Sri Lanka. I taught my first music lesson, teaching the names of the instruments, the “Music Man” song, and then making instruments with bottles, rice and daal. Getting them to repeat patterns and make the music was easy; it was getting them to stop over all the noise that was the hard bit! But they seemed to love it, and all three of us had fun leading the make-shift band, with our everyday-materials as resources.

We had to explain that it was our last day in Gandarawatte to the teacher, who seemed genuinely upset, so hopefully we will see her next week to say a big goodbye from the team!