Drawing and drawing blood

Hey everyone! Sorry that it's been so long since I've updated. I did type one out the other day, and then lost it, ($%#$!) so I have a lot of ground to cover.

We've been at our schools and in our classrooms for a little less than a month, now. Most of the kinks in the schedules have been ironed out. Grade 1 will be opening up two new sections, and English and an Arabic section, so our class sizes will go down. That will be a huge blessing, since 27 five and six year-old girls in each class is a lot to handle!

Our little girls our bundles of energy and my Grade 1 colleagues and I certainly do not worry about lack of enthusiasm. My two sections have enjoyed our phonics music time, and particularly enjoy attacking me with "sssss" for "snake" and "a-a-a-a-a" for "ant." It is certainly interesting to teach a class where more than half the time, they do not know what I am saying, and I do not know what they are saying. I find that we are able to communicate basic things, and like in any language, little ones can tell from the look on your face whether or not you approve of what they're doing. ;)

I feel like in the past three weeks the learning curve has been extremely steep. I've learned a lot of Arabic in order to survive, although most is slang and on the level of 6 year-old girls. I suppose some is better than none! Here is my sad little list of things that I can now say in (broken) Arabic:

-- Come on!

-- Stop!

-- Stop that!

-- Finish (this)/ Finished?

-- Girls!

-- Today, tomorrow, yesterday

-- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

-- Water

-- Food

-- Put it in your backpack/bring it home

-- Mother/father (usually while gesturing/threatening to call one or the other)

-- 1/5 and 1/6, switch classrooms

-- Sit down

-- Get down from there

-- Good

-- Problem/ This girl is a problem (usually when calling the social worker aka disciplinarian)

-- Art/music/sports/computer class

-- Listen

-- Be quiet

-- Stop talking


If none of the above works, and they get too crazy, I usually just let them color. All of my worksheets are text rich, and I figure that any exposure is good exposure. I have them trace the letters and words, even if they don't know what it means. All kids like to color, and they especially like to do an extra good job with letter tracing if it means a sticker. Seriously, these kids freaking LOVE stickers. Good kids and bad will jump through hoops for them, which is what brings me to the title of this post. Children here are very physical in the way that they interact, and are much more apt to slap each other around a little bit if someone crosses them, or jeopardizes their chance at Barbie stickers. On the other hand, while they do get into more frequent cat fights, an hour later, the same two students will be best friends again. Sometimes it is easier to let them solve their issues this way. The next day is always a clean slate, anyway, and I have plenty of Barbie bandaids, too.