So… the whole reason for us to be down here: the kids! Every day, we have 60 smiling kids ages 3-7 come to school to learn letters, numbers, and most importantly about God. The school is organized into four classes of 15 students each. Profe’s Kim, Christina, Lauren and Ashley teach two levels of preschool to their classes.
The day starts at 9 am with singing! The kids sing everything, from “Alelu-alelu-alelu-aleluya! Gloria a Dios!” to “Padre Abraham tiene hijos, Muchos hijos tiene Abraham.” Then to “Vamos a orar” and a morning prayer led by one of the students.
Following that, breakfast! Breakfast consists of bread plus either fruit, eggs or oatmeal drink. Oh, and you can’t forget los vitaminas! We’re fighting malnutrition, and giving the kids two meals a day helps little bodies become big strong bodies!
After breakfast, we start classes. The kids get a morning lesson about letters, or numbers, or sounds. Many people in this country write phonetically, just letters in the order they sound in sentences. We want our kids to be able to read and write and understand what it is they write. I am in the same building as Profe Ashley, and this past week they have been going over verb-vowel combinations and being able to recognize which one is which. I can hear young voices chanting “ma-me-mi-mo-mu” as they read the chart on the board, and then are able to hear a sound and recognize what it looks like!
 |
 |
 |
After an hour or so of class comes…. Recreo! A little outside exercise to let the kids get out some of their excess energy from sitting inside all morning.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Following recess, we have bible class. Jody is our Bible curriculum guy who plans out the lessons for all the classes. This semester, the kids have been learning about growing with God. The past two weeks have been “my new purpose” and “my new heart.” This week is the Word of God, and the next few weeks are on growing in faith, caring for our temples (bodies), growing in prayer and growing in worship. We’re planting the seeds of truth into the heart of these kids, so that we can hopefully nurture and grow them up in the Lord.
Then… Lunch! Odelsia is our amazing cook, who prepares lunch every day for the kids. It’s a standard Dominican lunch, consisting of some sort of carbohydrate (rice and beans, brown rice, spaghetti) and a meat (usually chicken or pork). Odelsia cheerfully cleans and cooks all those chickens every day! The kids often come back asking for seconds, which are given out until there is simply no more food.
 |
 |
After lunch, we take care of our recently cleaned teeth (thanks Bud Neeley) by brushing them! Everyone has to brush their teeth, so that we can hopefully stop some of the multitudes of cavities seen in the kids. This would be greatly helped if we could get them to stop chewing on sugar cane.
One of the final classes of the day is art class! In projects that relate to the day’s lesson, the kids paint flowers, or make ladybugs, or paste paper body pieces together. The creative ideas the teachers come up with daily are amazing.
School ends at 1:30 pm, and then all the kids are either picked up by siblings, parents, or occasionally a moto sent to retrieve them. After school, the teachers have time to do lesson plans, prepare for the next day, and try to decompress from the craziness before leaving, all to come back and do it again the next day!
