“Hope Finds its Fulfillment When Nurtured Through Faith and Shared With Love.” ~ Mollie Marti

Been a couple weeks since my last update.  After telling everyone to be careful not to get sick, I turned around and got sick.  Typical.  So I had a terrible cough and a fever and missed a day and a half of work before I got tired of lying around doing nothing.

Funny Stories

My first full day back to work, I didn't have much of a voice.  One of our more precocious 1st graders started chastising me for being there.

Some of our cuties (Troopers)

Her: Are you sick?  Why are you here?  You shouldn't be here!  Why are you here?
Me: I missed you guys.
Her: Awww, that's sweet!

Later that day, one of the 3rd graders came up to give me a cough drop.

Me: What's this for?
Her: My mom gives it to me when my throat hurts.
Me: Do you think my throat hurts?
Her: Yes.

I love these kids!



Coordinating

Extra math practice is always good.

I got to coordinate the program a couple days over the past couple weeks.  Last Thursday, Emily took the time off during the program to spend time with her parents, who were in town.  Well deserved, I must say. I also coordinated yesterday so that she could get extra work done and meet with a Board member.

Both days I coordinated, the kids who normally stay for the extra hour of homework at the end finished early!  Last week, the one remaining kid opted to study math flash cards with the rest of her time, rather than go home early.





Board Game Day!

The kids had this Monday off of school for Lincoln's Birthday (and they have next Monday off as well!), and then they had Tuesday off for one of California's infamous furlough days.  We normally close the program on the days that they don't have school, since they won't have homework those days, and that takes up a good chunk of their day with us.  But so many days off in such a short amount of time seemed excessive to us, so we opened the program on Tuesday anyway, and instead of homework time, the kids played board games!  It was great.  I got to play Yahtzee with a 3rd grader who had never played before.  She said that it was hard, but fun!

Battleship!

Figuring out how to play Takeoff

Takeoff-- I had this game as a kid!

Playing UNO

I swear we played it.  This picture is from the day before!

While setting up the games on Monday, I found Wizard's Chess!  I feel like I'm the only one nerdy enough around here to be excited by this.  But I'm posting the pictures anyway, dagnabit.

AND they played!

They played regular chess too, and other games not pictured here.  I regret (but only a little) that I was too busy playing games with the kids to take pictures of our K-3rd graders playing games too.  But they played Yahtzee, Junior Scrabble, Guess Who, Sequence, LIFE, and chess.

The great thing about board games is that they teach the kids all kids of things (math, colors, counting, probability, spelling, geography, strategy, following rules, budgeting, etc.), while the kids have fun.  And they really did seem to have fun.  I hope we can do it more often.

One More Training

I had to postpone a training because I was sick, so I ended up doing that one this week.  I trained an education consultant who is going to help us figure out how to improve the program to retain older students.  He had visited the building once before.  What he told his wife about it was that it reminded him of Hogwarts.  One more reason to get excited about finding Wizard's Chess!

Painted on the wall of the Cave.

Bible Study

I also managed to come down with a terrible migraine this week that hit really hard about halfway through the Bible Study on Tuesday, so I'm not sure what exactly was said, or how effective it was, but I do know it was about Hagar, and I'm posting my notes to the "Bible Study" page above.

So, moral of the story:  It's been a rough couple weeks, health-wise.  But I still love these kids.