Human climbing frame

It gets pretty cramped here at Thembelihle, particularly when there are new arrivals, as there is much less space in the classroom and much more weight on your arms, shoulders, legs, head, back and stomach, as you’re used as a human climbing frame by 26 excitable children. I don’t think I can count the number of times that I’ve been wrestled to the ground and had various vital organs crushed by bony little elbows. I’ve also found that once you let one child sit on your shoulders, every single child expects to be allowed on too. It’s pretty hard to explain without knowing Xhosa, that because they’re much bigger, they will probably break me, haha! J Although, 7 year old Boy-Boy has managed to clamber onto my back and use my hair as a stabiliser, pulling and grabbing on it, before shakily standing on his tip toes on my shoulder to retrieve a bean bag he had thrown in the air and that had somehow got hooked onto the basketball hoop…a painful experience. Next time, the beanbag is staying up there!

My clothes which I have so lovingly spent hours hand washing have been adopted by Preschool as their new tissues, and I seem to come in every evening with a selection of new bogies in various places across my stomach, back , shoulders and knees. Unam, the 6 year old with the runniest nose you will ever see now has competition, as Aya and Zethu seem to have developed a cold! My face has also absorbed rather a lot of sneeze recently, and yesterday one of the pre-schoolers decided to save the wall she was looking at from her spray and turn to face me, just as she sneezed…lucky wall, eh?! But they are getting there with their numbers, colours and animals. They are even moving onto simple addition, to catch up with group 1! Their handwriting is coming along well, although the letters seem to get bigger towards the end of the line, and they don’t understand that words REALLY DO need finishing, and the first few letters aren’t going to explain the rest of the word/sentence! Very cute :)

Group 1 now have constant pins and needles in their fingers after having spent most of their maths lessons sitting on their hands to stop them from counting on their fingers! Shame they can’t sit on their toes at the same time, as this seems to be their sneeky back up plan! But it has worked and I’m so proud of all of them. The 10 year olds who at the beginning of the week couldn’t do 1+1 or 1+2 without the aid of their fingers (no joke!) can now do basic sums in their heads! WAHOO!!! And most of the more capable students have now moved onto long addition with 3 and 4 digit numbers!

I have also been teaching them basic First Aid in their Lifeskills lessons (St John friends, you would be proud of them!). I came out of the lesson with pen drawn all over my arms which acted as ‘cuts’. Having no equipment for them to practice on meant they had to mime it all, but they loved it and I managed to work out which students learn better from practical activities, which is always useful! Their descriptions go something like “Ohh Maya, your arm is paining!!! I help you. I wash my hands, put on my gloves, I squeeze (a.k.a. apply pressure…yes this time it was me with the pins and needles). I clean clean clean cleeeeannn the arm, I get bandage on, I put on shoulder (a.k.a. elevate), I take the gloves in the bin and I wash my hands…” all whilst acting it out. SO CUTE! And they can all do it perfectly and remember it – they keep coming up to me and practising! We’re moving onto the recovery position next lesson which should be interesting!

I’ve now decided that black boards really aren’t that bad, after having spent a whole evening with one, drawing up the solar system for the following day’s science lesson, and coming in absolutely covered in chalk dust! Group 2 now know the basics of space, although are still struggling to get their heads around the fact that Pluto isn’t actually a planet! I also managed to squeeze in a bit of my beloved Geology and did a lesson on the structure of the Earth :D

UPDATE: I have now found a shop nearby that sells Lemons.