Where Did My Sleep Go?

Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Well I began my day today a little bit earlier than I had meant to , this morning at 3:30am we had a earthquake, a 4.5 one at that (not as big as the first one that I had my 3rd night of being here, but still pretty big). That wouldn’t have been as bad, but somehow in my sleep deprived, half awake brain I thought for some reason that because of the earthquake something had happened to my computer. If you are not aware my computer is my alarm and so I freaked myself out that something was going to happen and that my alarm wasn’t going to go off, so I ended up waking like every 30 minutes. It was a pretty long rest of the morning until I had to actually be up at 7:30.
I finally rolled out of my bed at 7:30, checked my e-mail quickly and jumped into the shower (though I guess that I could say more that I walk into my shower, as there is no step into my shower ). After my shower I quickly prepared my lesson for the day (I love how I can know what my lesson is going to be about but that is all only 40 minutes before the class begins and by the time it starts I have a full lesson).
In my morning class this morning I was teaching about puzzles. I started by asking the kids if they knew what a puzzle was, of course they didn’t know the word (a lot of times they do not know the word but they know the concept and that is my main point just to explain the concept to the kids and help them learn a couple of new words). I had prepared a piece of paper with shapes traced on them and I asked each of the kids to come up and help me place the right shapes on the right tracing, they did really well and understood what to do, I also had a picture of a apple that I had cut up and had them help me put it back together, the apple was a little too hard for them- I will remember that for the future. After we had done my two practice puzzles I got out a bunch of real puzzles and just let them do puzzles the rest of the class period, they loved it and had so much fun. It was so fun, I had started with the 4 year olds and so had only put out the simpler puzzles, but when I got to the 5 year olds they quickly went through the easy ones and kept on begging for harder ones to do.
For my afternoon class today was on sharing. I began first by asking a girl to come and help me draw a picture on the white board, she came up but I didn’t give her a marker and just started drawing, when I had finished my picture I thanked her and asked her to sit down. I then continued to do the same thing with jump roping, catching bugs with a net, and playing catch. When I had gone through all of the things I asked the kids if I had done everything right, “NO.” I asked them what I had done wrong and they told me that I had not given so and so a marker to draw with me, we went through each activity and we talked about how I had not shared. I asked them if I could try it again and to see if I could do it right, we went through each activity again, this time with me sharing. After each time I asked if I had done it right this time, when we were done I handed out soft balls for the kids to play with, but I only gave half the kids balls. I asked them if every kid had a ball to play with, and asked them what they should do to fix that, it was great because then they all went to different parts of the room to play with their partners.
Again in the afternoon class we were talking about Transportation, our particular topic today was Cars. I began by reading a story about things that go (ie cars, planes, buses, etc.) and then we got to watch a short clip from the Disney/Pixar Cars movie (of course the kids loved that ). After the movie we talked a little bit about how each car doesn’t have to be the same kind, size, color, etc. then we cut out our own paper cars and glued them on another piece of paper. We then used paper thumb tack things to make the wheels spin. It wasn’t my most dramatic day but I thought that all of my classes went pretty well.
Today while I was preparing for my class I all of a sudden heard a siren sound going through the town, I didn’t know what it was. I found out from Teacher Stephanie though, she said that it is a practice drill/siren that is played every day at the same time. It is a practice for if Taiwan goes to war or China invades or something like that, I guess when people hear the siren they are supposed to go into hiding or something like that. I find it interesting that it goes off every day but yet this is the first time that I have heard it since I have been here.
During my last class today, towards the end of it Allie came running up to me saying “Teacher, teacher” and pointing towards something in the back of the room. It was a light that was on that I had never seen on before, I had no clue what it was and asked Teacher Michelle if she knew what it was, she walked to the back of the room to see what we were looking at, she said that she didn’t know what it was and that she had never seen it on before. We had just barely finished this conversation when the power went out in the room. I had thought that maybe everywhere the power was off so it didn’t really concern me, but when I went into the office I found out that it was because they were doing work on the electrical box or something. I thought that my power would be off upstairs too, and was afraid that my laptop was going to die, but alas when I came upstairs we still had power!! (This is why I am able to be writing this right now).
Nothing else has happened today, that about sums up everything for my day…except that it is raining buckets and buckets of water outside, but yet my fan still feels really good and that Brooke left this morning at like 5:30am to catch the bus to Taipei. It is weird to think that she and Luke and Kaylene will all be gone in a little over a week and a half. That is all for now. This is Betherd, signing off!