"This is my home"

This week, our class size has grown from 9 to 11 students.  Two may seem like a small number, but I can definitely feel a difference.  We're struggling to integrate everyone into the routine.  However before this addition, our newest student was "four year old" Aden.   Aden came to us about three months late.  It was obvious from the start that Aden had NEVER been to preschool.  He was a wild child, often hitting other students, playing during circle time, and never helping to clean up during "clean up time." Aden was by far our most difficult child.  He didn't ever do his work unless one of us sat with him the entire time coaching him step by step, which makes helping the rest of the children do with their work extremely trying.  His focus lasted as long as a gold fish's memory; two seconds.

His adorable face with two deep dimples was quite endearing however.  And although he often hit other classmates, he'd always freely admit to it, and would apologize with such candor and empathy in his eyes, even reaching out to touch the other student. It made my heart melt the first few times I saw it.  Now, I'm just tired of the words, "Aden hit me!"

But today, Aden did something else to tug at those heart strings; he cried when it was time to go home.  His aunt told us that he's been doing it nearly every day.  He insisted that he wanted to stay at preschool.  When teacher Cindy said, "But Aden, it's time to go home now." he exclaimed adamantly in Korean, "This is my home!"

I'd like to take all the credit for this outburst, but I realize that it most likely has more to do with there being other children to play with than with my marvelous teaching ability. But I'd like to think at least, that I create a fun and safe environment for the children to learn and play in.  And that's enough to make my day. That one of my students, despite, how much we scold him, still wants to be at school with us.  These kids just might make leaving Korea more difficult than I bargained for.

Aquarium

One of our preschool field trips recently was to an aquarium.  It was kind of a lame aquarium.  There weren't many fish to see and what fish there were far from spectacular.  Some might even use the word LAME, or wait, I said that already.  But maybe I'm being too harsh. The aquarium was located in Yangpyeong, a decidedly podunk town in the middle of nowhere (yep, we live in the sticks).  The day was still quite cool, but not unbearably so.

It is common to fill our school bus past its capacity and we did so once again on this field trip.  Three students per each two seater bench.  No matter that the seat belts didn't always reach across both students.  And each teacher either had a student in their lap, or stood in the aisle. The bus attempted loosening it's belt but to no avail, and upon arrival it growled before it heaved and hoed to vomit us from it's cabin.  Luckily our destination wasn't far, and our cramped situation wasn't exacerbated by distance.

On our way into the aquarium.

the children weren't really sure what to do at the aquarium.

Notice how I'm having to hold Jearom's head so that he's looking at the camera.  That child!

Upstairs, was a hands on play area, but this, in my snotty opinion, was also a little trite.  The children pictured in this photo above who are in the middle of the couches are stomping furiously on the virtual fish pond which sounds cool in theory- the opposite of lame in fact, however, it didn't work very well, and the children were quickly bored with it.  The virtual fish swam around regardless of their stomping. There was also a station for fake fishing, using magnets, but it was quite difficult for our little ones.  The one super duper interesting aspect of the aquarium, at least for this jaded teacher, was the find of the BLUE lobster.  I'd never seen or even heard of a blue lobster, but in this itty bitty aquarium with probably less than five hundred fish in total had beautiful crustacean I wanted to take home with me.

After the inside of the aquarium became an atrium for wildly screaming and outrageously bored children, we went outside to have our snacks.  The students came prepared with snacks for the picnic that were prepared by their mothers. When I think of picnic food, and maybe once again, this is the pompous American coming out again, but I think of watermelon, among various fruits.  I think of cheese and crackers, and generally healthier type foods.  However, what the kids  brought were entirely different from what I imagined.  Instead of summer sausage and delectable treats, they brought junk food. They were sent to school for their picnic snack with sweetened chips, packaged dry, tasteless cookies, and other such Korean packaged goodies.  I was actually quite surprised at the lack of freshness filling our picnic blanket. There was only one mom who sent fruit, and non of the kids showed any interest in it.

the students kept giving us their hats to hold because they were tired of wearing them.  Of course, I then put them on my head!

After lunch we visited the fish tanks. One of the circular tanks with a diameter of no more than 10 feet, had sharks.  We weren't allowed to feel them though, just stare and point.  The kids enjoyed feeding the fish, but after ten minutes of children pouring cupfulls of fishfood into the tanks, the fish became uninterested, and the water became absolutely saturated with uneaten food.

Afterwards we played with bubbles. We were concerned about the ability of my class to handle the bubbles, but in the end, they proved that they wouldn't immediately pour out the soapy water as we originally expected, but the blowing of bubbles and/or the waving of their arms to produce bubbles was fruitless.  They weren't sure about those translucent spheres floating around, or what one was supposed to do with them. It was a fun, yet exhausting day playing with kiddos all day.  Can't wait till the next field trip!

When all else fails

I have put little time into the blog lately as anyone can see from the glaring lack of posts this month. However, when all else fails, pictures of my adorable students can always suffice as an adequate filler until I sit down and actually take time to write something other than, "isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen." 

Friday was a busy fun day in the land of the (korean age) five year old class.  We played handbells, which was ULTRA confusing, as the handbell colors were the wrong color for the Wii handbell game.  "Jinu- your bell is red, but you need to ring when you see the green handbell, got it, not the red one." "No, jearom, your white, not green." 
When your kids are just starting to learn their colors, and the colors don't match the screen, you can be sure that chaos will rein, and the urge to ring the hand bell at any moment in time just for the fun of it, will be the main chorus of music.  Maybe to some it qualifies as music, but in my world, it does not.

After handbells, we made a fun project.
What one needs to make the most awesome sucker person!
1. paper cup
2. sucker
3. googly eyes
4. q-tips
5. pipe cleaner.
6. markers
7. sissors
Now, when I say "we" made the sucker people, I mean that the kids sit there, while Cindy and I make their activity.  Why? Well, for starters they couldn't hot glue the googly eyes, nor the pipe cleaner hair on.  I mean I guess technically they could, but that probably woldn't be a very responsible move. Nor could they poke holes in their cups to stick the suckers in the top to act as the head or the q-tips in on the sides for the arms. 
What could they do? They picked the color of their cup, in English mind you!  They picked the color of their sucker and the color of the hair.  They were also able to color the cup with their markers, while Cindy and I furiously ran around trying to glue and poke everyone's sucker people to satisfaction.

In the end, I think everyone was happy with their final project.

Gestures around the world

 While I was still in the "education department" meaning the camp portion of English Village rather than the preschool where I am currently teaching, I was commissioned to make a culture class.  I love culture, as you might have noticed by the amount of culture posts I have written regarding Korea.  And, Koreans, like in every country I have ever visited, love their own culture.  Honestly, I think this is important aspect of being a citizen of a nation, to be proud of your roots, to be proud of where you come from.  I don't believe in ignoring faults, or smearing history in order for your citizens to have false pride as often happens in schools around the world.  In Israel, as in Germany, directly after WWII, the autrocities which had occured weren't spoken of, or even acknowledged. In America, many of our history books are written with such slant that its obvious to any student that America is the only worthy and good country out there, and that America's moral conduct in the world has always been strictly ethical and even motherly.  If you'd like examples of what I'm talking about, I'd suggest a book called, "Lies my history teacher told me." An utterly depressing book, but I'm sure the concept of slanting truths for your particular country is not unique to American history books.  However, the purpose of this offshoot was to comment on Korean children's lack of desire to leave their country. I see this in my own country all the time, but the excuse I give Americans, valid or not, is that America is a freaking huge country, and there is much diversity within our own borders.  Korea is the size of Indiana.  Imagine, never leaving Indiana. Never tasting cuisine authentically from a different country or region (such as our states), since Korean cuisine is just about the same all over the country.  I had a hard time pinpointing one aspect of culture to teach the children, but in the end, I settled on the importance of intriguing them to one day explore outside the confines of their country.  I created two power points, one which is geography based, but in the form of a quiz so hopefully more exciting,  and the other a travel jeopardy with subjects such as music, food, gestures and habits. I scoured the internet looking for a well made youtube video about gestures in different countries, and I found some, but nothing perfect and nothing slow and clear enough for an ESL learner, so instead, I decided to make my own because I am insane.  (I didn't actually calculate the amount of time it took, but I estimate somewhere close to 20 hours of filming and editing) Click here to view said video.



These are the two ppts I made.  Anyone, especially teachers, are more than welcome to use them, download them, and use them in your classroom. The sound files didn't transfer to Slideshare, so you'd have to import your own music, but that should be simple enough.

Travel jeopardy best… This ppt was created for ESL middle school students, interlow to interhigh. I can't take all the cr...

View presentation 

World Geography ESL… This is a powerpoint to test geography skills. It is fun and interactive and can be played as a gam...

View presentation

Making pizza the Korean way

As I have mentioned in the past.  Friday in preschool is "theme day." This past theme class was cooking- cooking pizza.  Except this was no ordinary pizza- oh no, this was special Korean pizza.

How does one cook Korean pizza?
1. get bread- most likely plain white bread
2. put tomato sauce on this bread
3. spread mashed sweet potatoes.  Yes, I did say sweet potatoes and yes I am aware that we are making pizza.  Remember, this is Korean pizza.
4. sprinkle onions and bell peppers which are called paprika in this country.  I don't know why.
5. cover in fake soy cheese which tastes like plastic.
6. place in oven and watch cook.
Honestly I was surprised that there was no corn.  There is never a pizza in Korea without corn. Even cheese pizza has corn on it because obviously you didn't mean "just" cheese.

So how did our pizza making day go?  It was a trial of patience, that is for sure.  First of all the kids had to have their cute aprons on, because you must be dressed for every occasion.
And then came the problem of the counters being incredibly high.  We had to find chairs that the kiddies could stand on so that they could make their pizza.  Often times when they were given the job of spreading something, they actually knocked off the toppings so that they were no longer on the pizza but on the pan, but really that was to be expected.
How did the pizza turn out?  I'm personally not a fan.  Maybe that makes me a pizza snob, and if so, then so be it. But the kids had fun, and that was the point.

In their cute aprons.

this has to be my favorite picture of the day.  look at Jerrome's face!

eating the pizza

they think it is yummy.

and so does my Korean co-teacher.  It is Korean pizza after all!

Preschool pics

Top (the boy in the picture)  hates art class. Most children love coloring, Top just finds it tiring.  Holding a coloring pencil and using ii is entirely too much work.  This strawberry was actually drawn by my co-teacher.

The students have Chinese class once a week.  They can now say "hello" in three languages :)

Friday afternoons are "special classes" . Last Friday was "health check." We checked their eyes, height and weight.  Two of the boys refused.

You can see my lovely house shoes here :)

We're trying to learn our colors. Its slow going.

Darling Elise really loves art class.  Isn't her picture lovely.

Richard- the angry cryer is at the top of the slide. This slide is the favorite activity of the kids.

This activity involves matching things of the same color.

Aram is the little girl who loves to wave and smile.  She is adorable.