more bodily harm

If drugging myself isn't bad enough, how's this: I got a rotten sunburn on my shoulders after spending an hour in the pool with two kindergarden classes -- and for at least 20 minutes it was cloudy. Damn the tropical sun! And damn myself for forgetting the sunscreen.

Yowch!

Despite the burn, it was a great Friday. The kids love swimming day. I think that they think swimming's cool, but the real highlight is showering together and sharing shampoo afterwards. They're all pretty adorable in their swimsuits...one little girl in my class had her legs in the wrong segment of her swimsuit, but I didn't figure it out until the end of class, when I finally clued in and thought to myself 'that's why that ruffle looks so odd!' We had a rollicking girls vs. the boys game of race-into-the-pool-and-pick-out-balls-and-fling-them-in-a-basket. It's nice when I can find a game that appeals to these kids' sense of competitiveness without making them cranky. It's a fine line. They sort of like competing, but they can't quite manage losing yet, and they aren't the kindest of winners. Inevitably in competitions there's a moment where two kids fold their arms up and frown emphatically in anger because either they aren't winning or someone on their team messed up. I have become very adept at organizing games that SEEM competitive, but that everyone wins equally in the end.

I think I should get a Nobel for this one day.

My latest invention is a new rewards system. The teacher who had this class for the first term gave out stars everyday, counted them up at the end of the week, and the three kids with the most stars got a prize. I tried this for awhile, but then found it was the same 3 or 4 kids who were winning every week. There was no incentive for the naughtier kids to behave since they knew they couldn't compete with the super 'good' kids. I started out by adding in hearts to the stars - say something nice or do something nice for your friend (like SHARE perhaps) and get a heart. The top heart-winner then got a prize also. But, still the same problem. So now I've got a new plan: any kid who can get 3 stars and 3 hearts per day gets a prize at the end of the week. It's pretty handy so far...I've been able to engineer 100% win rates, and all the kids are working much harder to get their stars and hearts, and if they're low at the end of the day, I can get them to do stuff like sing songs or pick up shreds of paper and knob-ends of crayons off the floor. It's great! If the allure of the all-winners-all-the-time shtick wears off, I figure I'll adapt to something like the whole class has to get the right amount or NO ONE gets a prize. Heh heh.

Today's prizes were bandaids! Yay!

We had an awesome time playing doctor (ha ha) all week. We made nurses' hats, had the nurse come to visit, pretended to get gashes (red face paint) that the doctors had to clean and bandage, and I also brought in a big sack of toy animals from Value Village so we could play veterinarian. By some incredible stroke of luck we were also studying 'et' words in phonics, so rah rah for v-e-t.

While I was up in computer class this afternoon with my guys, Teacher Marc came in and started a conversation by saying,

"Just in case Linya's mother talks to you..."

And of course I was like, "Uh, what did Ji do now?" But it turned out that Ji was not the culprit! Well, not to begin with anyways. He sat on Linya's bed just before nap time because his blanket had been accidentally put on her bed, she told him to get up, he refused since the bed had his blanket on it, and she then whipped off her hard plastic tiara and smashed him in the head with it several times, at which point Ji pummeled her. Hm. So, not really his 'fault', but not really evidence of him showing restraint in the face of unfairness. Can't imagine who he takes after in this respect... [Bangkok-3-June-2005] back to top