Sekolah 2

As promised, here are pictures of the the boys in their Wednesday uniform.  It's the PE uniform and on Wednesdays the class usually does more physical games like taking turns jumping on a small trampoline or taking turns kicking a ball.

Pak Dody and the kids gather around a bucket of water to learn how the game works.  

On this day, we went to the alley behind the school and played a water relay game ....uh, kind of.   The pacing was pretty slow, so the line of the bucket brigade became very zig-zaggy and stretched out at times as little feet wandered!

Joshua receives the "bucket" from a classmate.

Some of the older kindergarten girls really enjoy playing with Joshua.

After the exercise time, there is snack/break time.  When the kids finish their snacks, they have some time to socialize and look at books or play with a few wooden toys.

Jonathan really enjoys looking at books during break time.

The classroom (really a converted garage) is transformed for table work.  

My favorite days are when we have table work.... only about once a week.  The boys seem to do better when they have their own place to sit and an individual task to perform.  

Josh is excited to be sitting at his own table!

Rare moments of focus....

On this day, the kids were working on a puzzle worksheet.  The pieces would eventually be put together to form the letter K.  First they had to use a perforating tool and a padded board to perforate all the puzzle pieces, so they could then be punched out and then glued onto the puzzle.  I was amazed at the amount of focus Jonathan was able to give to this project!  He and Joshua really enjoyed having a hands-on tool to work with!  They stayed on task much longer than the other boys.

As you can see, most of the boys have left their work and only the girls and Jonathan (and Joshua with some encouragement from me) are still on task.  

Going to sekolah has been much more difficult than I had anticipated.  It's only 2 hours a day, 3 days a week, but I feel like it has changed the entire rhythm of our lives and we haven't found our balance yet.  The 100% instruction in the local language just sounds like gibberish for the boys and the pacing is so slow that they just have a hard time staying engaged.  It would be one thing if the classroom control is good, but the reality is that most of the boys in the class are running wild most of the time.  When we decided to attend this sekolah, we knew of it's weaknesses but we chose to move forward.  Now we're feeling the weaknesses very strongly.  We are committed to sticking it out until the end of May, when we will start our summer travels.  God has given me the gift of persistence, and I'm just holding on to hope that someday soon, the language will start making sense to the boys.  We'll turn a corner and start having more good days than difficult days.  As the Lord reminds you, please pray for us in this endeavor!  

My eventual goal is to be able to leave the boys in class and just wait on the porch until class time is over, however after 3 months we're not at the point yet.  Another American mom, who used to teach preschool in the US, had been encouraging me to just drop the boys off at the door.  She has since started spending some time at the sekolah as part of her language learning.  Last week, after seeing the classroom experience firsthand, she told me "I get it now.  I understand why you will never be able to leave them there alone!"  I gave her a big hug!  

 On the plus side:  although our school days are still difficult, the boys' attitudes are already changing.  Jonathan used to say "I don't like those kids.  They don't speak our language."  Now Jonathan and Joshua both know the names of some of their school friends and talk about them at home.  They both are using more local language words at home and both sometimes sing some of their sekolah songs at home.  Joshua especially seems to be absorbing a lot of language and has learned several songs that he sings often.  Jonathan is more interested in learning local language words so we are all more motivated to be learning more language.  

This Saturday there is going to be a day long field trip to some local sights.  We'll leave at 6:30 in the morning and get home at 8 pm or later!  It will be quite the language immersion experience and we're hoping that the whole family can go!  We've all had colds.  Jonathan and I are better, but Dave and Joshua are improving more slowly.  I hope we all can be better by Saturday so we all can go!