Friday, November 20, 2009

The last day in our garage


Today is the last day we taught the children in our garage. Funny, but it is kind of sentimental to say goodbye to this place. This is where it all started, the very beginning of Bright Star Education. Coming Monday we will move house and from then onwards the school will no longer be in our garage.
We still haven't found a new school yet but yes, I know that there's a time for everything. And obviously this is the time for waiting (again). The question is only how long, since it is Friday today and we have packed everything....

Anyway we are planning to keep the school closed until December 1st. From that time onwards we will reach out to the slum areas in our new neigbourhood. I'm so excited about the fact that we are offering quality education for the disadvantaged. Isn’t it great? Children that normally cannot get (English) education at all, will get a change and hope for a much better future!

Monday, November 9, 2009

The Water man...


Learning  and teaching can be so much fun! This morning I was showing a picture of a firefighter and asked the children what they saw on the picture. Prasanna, one of our 6 year olds, aswered eagerly: "Miss, that is the water man!" Greatly found, don't you think? 
Usually we teach theme wise and try relate all the activities during the day with eachother. So we are singing about 10 little firefighters, we learm about afety and the fireman job and we can colour or cut and paste about the same. Maybe nothing special for you, but here in india a revolutional concept.Teaching here is still be done in classrooms with too many students, unqualified teachers and very little place for creativity with the focus on writing and knowledge only.

The Bright Star Education kids are having a  good time learning about vehicles. Last week they learned  about boats and the small ones got to play with water, foodclouring and bubbles....You can only imagine the fun they had, playing outside. But as always they are not only playing but learning as well.The mother tongue of these children is Maharati, so often very common words for us, are still foreign to them. When we let them play with the water they called it pani. After we explained that it is water in English, they kept on saying: "water, pani, water, pani",while playing with it.What a great way to learn!