Always learning

Today started with a big downpour just as Doug and the boys were departing for school.  An hour later when Selah and I set out with umbrellas and raincoats for Casa de Fe it had slowed down some.  We prayed that we'd encounter a taxi soon after hitting the road and sure enough, one driver saw our circumstance and gave us a lift.  Three minutes and $1.50 later we hopped out onto the rock-covered drive of the orphanage and walked up the slight hill to the two tiny classrooms (which would both fit in our living room in Katy). 

As soon as we walked in I could tell things were a bit off today.  Profesora Nelly, the teacher, headed out the door a full hour early to take the kids to their 10 am bathroom break.  While they were away I put the two red wooden tables and seven plastic chairs back to their right places.  I then decided to walk over to the big house to borrow some paper towels to clean up yesterday's remnants of dried glue on the table tops.  When I joined up with Nelly and the kids, they were lining up outside the house, each child loosely holding onto the shirttail of the child in front of him/her.  Two kids were having a hard time following directions so they remained behind with one of the Tias (aunts/helpers) so that Nelly and I could walk the other five back to our room.  This process is always an interesting one since the short climb to the classroom always contains things of interest to your typical three-year-old:  nails, gigantic green bugs, discarded pieces of metal, trash, an infinite number of rocks, and a brook just a few feet away bidding them to come. I'm always surprised when we actually get them to willingly enter the classroom; it doesn't happen often.

We entered and decided to start with an activity on the floor.  Antony would lay on the piece of butcher paper and Nelly would draw his outline--at least that was the plan.  Antony laid down but would not stay still so the drawing was fairly challenging.  The other kids, now rejoined by the other two who had stayed back with a Tia, were really just happy to rip the paper or walk away to play with the other toys.  After many failed attempts at getting the kids to settle on the floor, the Tia and I simply let them play while Nelly worked only with Antony and his wiggly self. They started over once, got the simple outline done, and then Nelly sat on the floor cutting out his figure from the paper.

When cutting was complete, Nelly called all the kids over to the table so that we could glue two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and two ears on this life-sized cut-out of one squirmy child.  After insisting, begging, and hauling little bodies to the table, we still managed to only get four of the seven to join us, and then no one wanted to keep their fingers out of the glue or off the paper that encouraged them to rip and tug.  Reminding little fingers to do what we'd asked did not work, neither did holding kids at the table.  They were simply not interested.  Before we knew it, all seven little bodies were engaged in their own idea of play--balls flying, plastic dishes dumped out, toy animals spread around, even one guy hanging from the bottom wall-mounted shelf looking for some play dough--and we three adults felt helpless to operate against that tide.

Honestly, this is where I would have been peeved. How could seven three-year-olds be this challenging?!  They don't outnumber us by THAT much, do they? They simply have to listen and obey.... right?

Well....Nelly's the teacher for good reason.  She put the uninteresting activity away--who cares if Antony's cut-out has only one eye and no ears?  The real Antony's not much for listening anyway. 
She then did the unthinkable--the exact opposite of what I would have done (which of course is to lecture and demand that we do the activity I had prepared).  She opened the big container of glue, poured eight little plates-full, and moved to the floor.  With eight plates of glue beconing to the kids, all within arms reach, every child sat intrigued on the floor. Nelly proceeded to put her entire palm in one of the globs of glue, mashed it to the other palm, and then pulled them apart repeating in Spanish, "open, closed, open, closed".  All eyes were on Nelly; they were glued (forgive the pun!).

The kids played with the glue in their dish and put it all over their hands. They didn't mess with their neighbors, or their clothes, or any of the toys.  They just pushed and pulled, pushed and pulled; and then when their glue dried, they ever so carefully pulled dried glue off of their fingers, or their neighbor's fingers, or their teachers' fingers. We did this for 30 straight minutes!  No one even cared that snack had been delivered.  This was way better than popcorn.  Before long, even yours truly sat focused over the dried glue on her own hands and on Antony's.  Can't lay still to be drawn, but by George, that little guy can park himself in my lap for an eternity so we can tidy up his hands.  Amazing.

So, instead of learning body parts as planned, we worked on fine motor skills, patience, and cooperation.  Apparently that was to be learned by the teachers too. 

Hope you're learning not to be disappointed, but instead learning to do something that works (and may even be fun).
Blessings, kim