Teaching!

Sorry it's been a while... I have been so busy with planning lessons, and GLEB! He's one of my students and he's a lot to handle. I teach two classes here, one of them is a kindergarten/primary class that has kids from ages 3-6 and the other is level one and they are 7 and 8... The kindergarten has 30 kids and we have four rotations a day... They are crazy! I didn't know that teaching would be sooooo hard!! I still love it though. Right now I teach shop. We get to build things every day that have different types of vocabulary in them so they learn how to say new words. Its fun, but I have to be creative to try and keep every kids' attention. My homeroom class has 8 kids in it! They are sooo cute, but very loud and kinda mean! (I didn't know kids could punch so hard) I've never been spit on, climbed on, hit, hugged, or smiled at more in my life! Although these kids can be harsh, they show you so much love and you can't help but smile through the chaos...

This is one of the first lessons that I did... We attatched the pom poms to the string and put them through the bottom of the cup. It was hilarious trying to watch 3 year olds try to catch the pom pom in the cup. But they still loved it!

These are all of my pom poms in their cups ready to start class. The shoe box is full of my store items. When the kids spontaneously speak english or repeat after me really well, they get a token. Then at the end of the day we have store. They get a better prize the more tokens they have... you get the concept..

This is one of our classrooms! Our supply closet is just to the left of where I took this picture... But this is also where we teach our level one class! It's so small and soooo Russian!

Ok so for level one...I absolutely hated this class at first because I swore that gleb was going to be the death of me, and we already teach kindergarten every day, so it was A LOT to add another class on. (Now I have 2 classes mondays and wednesdays) But after class on Wednesday this week...I love them!! They were all soo good! They are smart too, especially Gleb. He just has ADHD or something that makes it REALLY hard for him to concentrate. He's supposed to be in the older class but they wouldn't let him because all of the kids parent's in that class complained about him, so the only way that he could continue with English, was if he stayed in the same class...haha But he's alright. We have 3 teachers in there... so we can handle him!

This is Lonya. It was his 8th Birthday on wednesday, so we had a small celebration. He was pretty excited. (although we didn't know it was his birthday, so please excuse his white trash birthday hat that holly pulled together in one minute.)

This is our class hopefully learning something. They had just finished their spelling test. (Thats Branda in the back correcting them...) Yay for us 4 of them got 100%! We are such good teachers!


This is Gleb. This is actually a pretty good face. Usually he just looks really, really confused! haha

This is Nikita. He is holding his picture that he drew of me...haha yeah in Russia they have their own version of american idol and the guy that won last time is named Dima Bilan. All the kids in my class call me Dima Bilan, they think it is SOOOOO funny! So now I just let them, and to get a reaction out of me, Nikita drew me as Dima Bilan. (Yeah he is a terribly ugly Russian that has a Mullet that has blond streaks in it! Plus he can't even sing at all! You tube him.)

This is our class...Don't they look like they are having the time of their lives? (well...except gleb) Ah...I love to teach! (Well, when they are well-behaved! :) And understand you ok...)

I'm out of time, but I will get on soon to tell you all about our AMAZING trip to the Peter Paul Fortress!! It was amazing!! Love you All!

Dena