completed

I am done with the first half of this school year.  This is cause to celebrate, that’s for sure!  This first semester has been fun, trying, exciting, long, confusing, successful, and has flown by.  When I first arrived, I was ready to go back home.  Thankfully I didn’t.  Now that I’m roughly five months in, I’m impressed with just all that has become “normal.” I’m so glad I stuck it out as I’m really enjoying all the experiences and relationships being made.

So this last week has just been a fun week for my students.  We did tons of Christmas crafts and watched a couple of Christmas films.  The most exciting thing was baking sugar cookies (6 batches...what was I thinking?!?) as a whole grade two team consisting of 32 students.  This was a three-day process.  Day one was the mixing of the dough.  Day two was the cutting of the cookies, baking the cookies, and making the icing for the cookies.  Day three was the decorating of the cookies.  It was so great to see the kids so excited about it all! After all, this is a pretty foreign task for the kids as most homes out here do not even have ovens (for example, I don't have an oven and only have a small toaster oven that I just bought recently).  Hopefully they’ll remember this experience for a long time!

 

Mixing the cookie dough!

 

Cutting out the shapes!

 

Decorating the cookies!

All of the kids with their bags of cookies!