strawberries!!!

Friday was field trip day at my kindy. We went to a strawberry farm.It took more than an hour to get there. Apparently there was an accident between a small bus and a car on the way but I didn't see it. Turns out that the accident was one of the buses from another branch. The front was smashed in and the car was very damaged. The bus driver was a little bit hurt but is okay. The kids are all okay (they all wear seatbelts), but were quite shaken up.Once at the farm we went into a large building full of picnic tables to wait for the little tour.Along one wall was a long table of strawberry, lettuce and other plants grown by hydroponics.The kids got a little antsy, of course, but were quite well behaved. The tour began with a little introduction. I can't tell you what was said since it was all in Korean. After the introduction we went into one of the very long greenhouses.It was a bit of a pick and eat tour. Yum! Fresh strawberries! They were so sweet and juicy.[Another picture here]
Some of the kids ended up covered in strawberry from head to toe. Too funny. Then it was back to the other building where the kids got to take turns mashing strawberries to make jam.After they each got their turn, it was lunch time. The kids all brought lunches and the school provided the teachers' lunches - kimbap. It would have been okay but it was fancy kimbap with sesame leaves in them and half of them had fish or fish eggs or little dried shrimp in them. Yuck! I had plenty to eat, though, as the kids had lots off great food to mooch. :D I even got a fruit by the foot!! (Can't easily get things like that here.)After lunch the kids had play time with bubbles and balls to kick around in a little yard. There were a few Jindo puppies in a cage to the side. I went over and ended up getting a lot of the kids interested in having their hands licked. At one point the adult Jindo at the other end of the yard ended up with one of the balls. It's the dog's ball now. A few puncture holes rendered it quite useless. There was a snack of bread with fresh warm strawberry jam. It was so delicious! The kids each got to take home one jar of freshly made jam and I will get a couple that I ordered on Monday. The teachers all got to take a container of strawberries for free. :) Then it was time to head back to Seoul where the parents would pick the kids up at pre-chosen spots. I got to go home a little early. What a great way to end a nice field trip day.

gifts

I got a couple of gifts this week, both from the same student!Yesterday I got a nice gift for the Lunar New Year or 설날 (it is Romanized as Seollal, but the Korean is actually written as Seolnal), one of the most important holidays in Korea.The paper Hanbok (Korean dress) is a card from Kerry. A letter from the mom is in the envelope. The purple ribbon gift contained a business card holder. The red bag wrap had a fancy cloth bag and a note book. I guess Kerry picked out a book for me that had a butterfly because she likes butterflies.Then today, it was Kerry's birthday party at school (and her sisters, but I don't teach her) and the gifts she brought for her classmates and teachers (goodie bag type gifts) was fancy soap. The students all got one bar. The main teachers each got two. They smell so nice!!!
One thing I find interesting in Korea is how everything is always wrapped. Even simple things are often wrapped very extravagantly.

mask

With the swine flu getting more and more around, last week the school decided to bring in a new dress code - masks for everyone. All of the teachers and students must wear masks all day. Here are a few of my kids:[Justin][Brian][Ellen][maybe Thomas??? (one of the twins - forget which one was wearing the yellow mask that day. They keep changing day to day)]
It's a nice idea but doesn't really work. None of the kids wear them properly (most of the teachers as well) and many have stopped wearing them altogether. ALL of the kids keep touching their faces anyway, trying to sneak a nose pick here and there, taking the mask OFF to sneeze or cough, etc. Then they touch the tables, the classroom pencils and erasers and everything else. Many have them down just covering their mouth but not their nose, or just hanging on their chin. [In the pics of the kids above, I fixed their masks before taking the pics.]
Today I was watching my students. Only one had the mask covering her nose. The others had theirs down or rolled in a ball on the table. One kid had a pencil hanging from his nostril, another had a pencil in her mouth. Ugh. Also, while the kids are wearing masks during the day, during snack time and lunch time, the masks are put away and the kids are all sitting together at little tables, talking and breathing over each others' food and poking at each others' food at times.

What's the point???
As of this week I have stopped wearing one at all because it is impossible to teach phonics with a mask hiding my mouth and muffling the sound. You can't teach the proper way to make the 'th' sound without them seeing what I am doing, and without me seeing what they are doing to make the sound (there is nothing equivalent to the 'th' sound in Korean so it is sometimes difficult for them). They're quite uncomfortable anyway and make my face itchy.
Another thing the school has brought in is hand sanitizer. They have the kids using the stuff between classes. Well, the kids are getting used to using the hand sanitizer and some are getting obsessed with it. Apparently some of the other foreign teachers have seen some of the kids using sanitizer after going to the bathroom instead of washing their hands.
I think most of them will be getting immunized sometime the beginning of this month. See if they get rid of the masks then.

Kindy Graduation Speech

This is from a Kindy graduation ceremony in South Korea. She is 5 years old and it was her 3rd year of learning English. It is amazing how well she does her speech. I'm not sure I could do a speech as well as she did. (I'm not so good with public speaking.) Her mom wrote the speech and Lindsay teacher edited it.

kindy sketchbooks

All of my students had a sketch book that they would draw in when they were not on their toys day (they alternated). Some of them are fantastic artists; creative and skilled. I was surprised at how good some of them are. They are much better than I am yet they are only 6 (they just turned Korean age 8)! I should have taken pictures of more of their work, as I loved them all. Here are some of Jason's drawings.Little characters before coloring:A couple of close-ups:Cute!A couple of close-ups:Smog?

Rachel

Gotta love it!!"I AM PASSED FOR WIND THE RIDER GO AWAY"
On the front: "Classic Emblem" and a rhinestone skull.

turkey trotter

It says, "THIS T SHIRT CONTAIN ONE SLIGHT FANTASTIC TURKEY TROTTER"Teddy Bear. Too cute. :)
[sorry the front one is a bit blurry. It is hard to get kids to stand still and in trying to get him to stand still, I moved a little. This was the best of them.]

12 Days of Christmas

A warm up to Christmas.
This is Jinny. She is in my 5 yr old after school class (meaning she is 4 years old western age). Her regular class is doing this song for their Christmas concert and she loves it. She often starts singing it at random times during the class. She is one of the sweetest and cutest kids ever, really!!

Busy, Busy, Busy

I've been keeping myself quite busy, sort of.
There's work, of course. Then there are a couple of after work gigs. Add onto that an attempt to go to hot yoga, doctor appointments, dinners with friends and/or the boyfriend, weekend trips and evenings out, and I am BUSY!!! When I am home, I don't feel like doing anything. At home I've been downloading music (had to find some for work) and looking for Christmas movies to download - after the Christmas concert I'll bring my computer to work and my class will watch Christmas movies for the rest of the day (and maybe the following day as well!!).
Work is nuts these days, in preparation for the Christmas concert. Unlike last year's concert, which was only a month after I started, this one is a lot of work. Last year, they had already started teaching the songs and one of the songs the kids already knew because it was used in the Parent's Night show. Also, the concert was just upstairs in the gym, only 3 classes in a concert. This year, we can't use our Parent's Night song, because the moms all saw it. And the concert is in some hall or place with a stage, half of the school in concert at a time. My class is second last the second day, with 4 classes up before us. We were told we had to have them doing 3 songs (choreographed) and a poem. Well, I didn't like any of the poems and decided my kids would do a 4th song instead. I'm glad the school agreed. They thought it was a great idea as all of the other classes were doing poems, which can end up being a tad boring.
So, my kids are singing : I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas, Little Saint Nick by The Beach Boys, All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey, and Happy Christmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon. Many of the kids already know the words to all of them (or most of them) and most of the dances as well (which I made up with a little help from my co-teacher). Our assistant teacher is now making the costumes that we decided on - a vest (red for boys, green for girls) with a reindeer face on the front and their names along the bottom. Very cute.
We had our first demo today with the supervisor watching. She was impressed with how much our kids knew. I think some of the other classes changed their songs or are just starting some of them. Our kids just have to practice. And we have to start practicing with the bells for All I Want for Christmas is You and glow sticks (glowing hearts and star wands) for Happy Christmas.
We have 2 weeks left before the concert. We'll be ready.
I'll post some videos of the kids practicing sometime in the next couple of weeks. They are so good!!!

"I Like To Move It"

How I love my kids!!!!!! My co-teacher put on some music and on came the song "I Like To Move It". The kids loved it. Three of my kids started dancing. SOOOOOOOOOOOO Funny!!!!! Daniel is in the front doing to robot or what ever it is he is doing. Tony (back left in striped shirt) has quite the moves, and Ryan is back right.

a journey through the human body

August's school field trip was to the aT Center
to see some sort of body exhibit.
VERY interesting, to say the least.

You enter the exhibit through a giant mouth.The kids got to brush the giant teeth.Then it was over the tongue and down a slide into the throat.We got to see the lungs and the liver.We got to go through the heart (quite dark, actually).In the stomach we got to see all the goodies
that the giant had for breakfast.The kids got to learn all about the urinary tract,
including a demo on how boys go to the bathroom...
INCLUDING HOW THEY ALWAYS SEEM TO MISS!!!
(It is going on the seat and splashing all over his feet!!!)We got to go inside a rather large pregnant woman
and see some very scary looking babies.Then it was down a slide and through the intestines.

Hmmm... can you guess what comes next???
The exit was, well, a tad shocking,
though not surprising being that this is Korea.The kids had some time to climb around
on the mock giant piles and puddles.

Quite the field trip,

wouldn't you say???