Tuesday May 7th

On May 7th, we got up early like any other day and got ready quickly. We walked to the bus stop at Burger King (Yes, there is a burger king, and a popeyes, KFC, and Wendys). Its amazing how many people fit onto the bus. Normally by the end of the bus ride it is about 3 or 4 kids to a seat. When we get to the school in the morning all the kids run up the stairs to play before they have to go to their classes. On Tuesday, I was in the first grade again and class began with the kids sweeping, watering the plants and taking their vitamins. The kids Spanish class began with a competition of sorts, two kids had to go to the board and write down the letter the were told, in both a capital letter and lower case letter. Whoever completed the task first or the closest after 5 seconds, earned a sticker. The game then continued in the same fashion but instead of letters the kids had to write whole words. After playing these educational games the kids wrote in their notebooks a couple of sentences to practice their writing. The kids in the class call me maestra (teacher) which is really cute. Ms. Edwards is worked in the fifth grade again and has been teaching everything from math to social studies to biodiversity. The names of the kids in the first grade are Betsaida, Melisa, Daniel, Walter, Cinthia, Estrella, Sulma, Raul, Julio, Kimberlyn, Dareen, Misael, Keyla, Carlos, Heylin, Genesis, Leiryn, and Nelson. On Tuesday there were 18 kids in class, 10 girls and 8 boys. One of the most interesting things that I learned this day was the way in which the kids learn to read here. In the United States we use sounds to teach children how to sound out words and then be able to read and write them. In Honduras the kids learn the sounds of letter chunks for example, a letter such as "H" with all the vowels. So if they were to learn the letter chunks for the letter "H" they would learn ha-he-hi-ho-hu. After learning these sounds they are able to spell words. For example, the world bonito is a word that can be spelled using letter chunks. First you go through the letter sounds and pick out the letter b, ba-be-bi-bo-bu. From these sounds you pick which one matches the beginning sounds of bonito, "bo". Next you go through the letter sounds for n, na-ne-ni-no-nu. From these sounds you pick the middle sounds which happens to be "ni". Lastly, you take the letter t, ta-te-ti-to-tu. From these sounds you pick out the sound "to". When you put together all of the letter sounds you get bo-ni-to. After finishing up in Spanish the kids headed to recess for 30 minutes and when they came back they brushed their teeth. After brushing their teeth it was time for Ciencia Naturales (natural science), The teacher read a passage from the book and asked the kids to answer questions related to the passage. The kids then copied down the passage into their notebooks. At the end of the day we took the school bus to the Hogar to help the kids with their homework. When the kids got home to the Hogar they went and changed and ate lunch. After lunch they rested for a little while. When the kids were finished resting we went into the homework room and helped the kids with their math homework, they were doing fractions. After finishing their homework the kids went outside and played a game of soccer. We took a cab to the Megamall and bought food from the supermarket to make for dinner.