Marci Soifer

If I had to guess, I would say that it is 85 degrees today. Maybe 90. The air hanging over the city of Lima brings the traditional fog and humidity, as I have learned to expect everyday. The sun, when breaking through patches of fog, brings oppresive moments to any outdoor activity, and the breeze moves in small, stagnant bursts. Needless to say, I am melting in some respects as I sit at the computer today. And by melting I mean, I am actually contemplating hanging out in the local ATM vestibule for a little while (I am serious), because it is the only accessible place I know of with air conditioning. But, I will end this descriptive complaining, as I understand that for those of you reading this in the depths of winter, you could not possibly appreciate such discussion. Just so you know, it is a hot summer here. Nuf said.

This week, the other volunteer at Deporte y Vida and I cracked down. We decided that we were going to make this experience meaningful if it killed us. The first step to this is putting some serious thought into what kinds of creative things we can implement that would appropriately address the learning capacity of the kids and...fun. We came up with a few ideas, referring back to the things that the kids ask us about and the classroom cirriculum in both my second grade and her first grade classes. This week, after starting off with the ever popular, Plate, Plate, Dove (which you may recall from last week is my poorly translated version of Duck, Duck, Goose) (and no, I have not corrected it) and teaching the kids a less popular version of Red Light, Green Light, I decided to turn back to the Spanish song sheets that the program director in Ayacucho put together for me. She wrote out four pages of lyrics to songs for kids in Spanish, and I memorized the tunes. And, after a long, detailed conversation with my teacher about my experience with kids and ideas for her class, I came up with a plan.

While teaching verbs in my class, my teacher and I used If Youre Happy and You Know It...which, of course, I am now a pro at belting out in Spanish with tons of verbs that bring about fun (to tickle, to laugh, to sing, to stomp...the works). We started to talk about adjectives and colors a little, and I decided to teach the kids a song that incorporates the Spanish and English words for each color:

(to the tune of Frerra Jaquea (spelling is wrong I'm sure))
Red es rojo, red es rojo
Azul blue, azul blue
Amarillo yellow, amarillo yellow
Verde green, verde green

Black es negro, black es negro
Brown marron, brown marron
Purple es morado, purple es morado
Blanco white, blanco white

Oh the fun we had. The kids loved it, and we sang it over and over. I brought in signs that I made with the appropriate color markers and the English words for them to follow along, and it was great. Even the teacher and assistant were learning.

I decided to take this further. The other volunteer in my placement and myself had the idea that we could use playdough to help with the lessons of these colors, and figured that we could just buy the supplies and actually make our own playdough with the kids. Knowning that chaotic situations like colored dye and floury messes should not really be put into language barrier situations with approximately 30 children, I decided that we should do it anyway. So, yesterday...it was playdough day at Deporte y Vida, or shall I say, El dia de plastilina.

We brought plastic bowls and somehow, I do not know how really, we convinced the kids to sit down in front of us as we all sang the color song a few times and the other volunteer and I poured the ingredients into a bowl. Before adding the food coloring, we asked the kids what the colors they wanted, and the had to answer in English. Using both hands, the bowls got passed around and the kids mixed the Playdough themselves. Laughing and commenting on the different, new colors of their fingers and nails, the kids even attracted more kids to come and partake in the action (and all of the teachers came out to see what the comotion was about, and excitedly watched from the sidelines). Soon, we had a yellow, red, blue, and green batch of playdough to distribute, and four lines of kids that must have been at any given time, 20 kids long each. When we handed it out, the kids all had to ask for the colors in English. And, they knew all the colors.

My teacher approached me during clean up, and asked if we could make playdough into a class lesson. I told her that I could absolutely think of something to do for class. So Wednesday, I am leading my class in a lesson on colors with playdough. I am really excited and have a few ideas, but naturally, if you have some more, I am open for suggestions. These ideas must also, of course, incorporate the color song.

I have learned a lot about the kids at my placement already. Angela is working steadily, and she know understands that I am particularly interested in her success. She seems to be a bit dependent on me now, and this makes me nervous, since I am not a permanent fixture in her school experience. Toward the end of the week, I worked on giving her a few tools for the lesson in the beginning and wandering to another bench to help other struggling kids. She would run to me when she had a question, or she would just sit and wait for my return, but she does not seem motivated, interested, or able to remain in a consistent school mode. Christopher, the hyper active 8-year-old with permanent bed head awkwardly pressed against his sweaty forehead, has discovered that I am a readily accessible resource. I like him, because he speaks with an endearing urgency...as if something will actually happen to him if he does not finish his math problems by the end of class...but find him very difficult to understand, because his words are literally a mile a minute. There is Wendy, who is a very petite 6-year-old who dresses in overgrown dresses that I assume she inherited from siblings, sits very quietly in the corner, and is always the first to finish her assignments. Yohanna and Sandra sit together in front, because Yohanna, although 9-years-old and developmentally disabled in some way that I have not yet been able to understand totally (other than her body shape differing from the typical 9-year-old, her speech being constantly slurred, and her capacity to understand basic concepts like movement in time and space being challenged), seems to be a whiz at the second grade assignments (I think she may have done the grade a couple times before) and Sandra pretty much just peers through her long, dark, stringy hair at Yohannas notebook and cheats on every assignment (I am on to it now).

Anyway, things at Deporte y Vida are picking up. I will write more soon.