In most of my lessons I went through the flash cards first with them to check their pronunciation as most classes had already learnt the animal names. I added in animal sounds and actions to make it more fun for them and they lapped it up.
The pronunciation on some were quite unexpected. I would have thought that snake would be easy but they were saying it more like 'suh-nake' and the same with spider it was 'suh-pie-dur'. When one of the teachers joined me in the class I realised it was her pronunciation that they had learnt it from.
When I demonstrated the pronunciation infront of the class emphasising the 's' sound and exaggerating snake as only one syllable and spider as two, the teacher picked up on it as well and I saw her practising saying it the same way as me. Learning obviously isn't just for the children!
I developed a game using my flash cards which went down quite well. I had 6 flash cards with numbers 1-6. I invited a child to the front who would pick a face down fanned out number card from me. I would ask them what number it was and they would tell me and the class. They would then have to find the picture of the animal at the number relating to their card. I would then ask what animal it is. After they had told me their job was to write out the name of the animal next to the picture. Depending on ability for some classes I wrote out lines representing the number of letters in the word to help them. If they struggled I gave them a clue or a bit of help and when they had finished the whole class would give them a clap.
A game I played with my smartest Prathom 3 class was alphabet animals. I wrote the alphabet across the board and split the class into two teams which was more to control the class and turn taking than for a competition. One person at a time could come out from 1 team and write an animal name starting with one of the letters and then it would be the next teams turn. It gets competitive towards the end when there's only tricky letters left. The winning team is the one that writes the last animal.
Hangman also worked well with some classes but not so much with others. One class was full of children very reluctant to join in and say a letter. Another was so eager that we struggled to play because it got too rowdy with everyone shouting letters.
Prathom 1 loved the game where 'Teeecha Chrowee' made herself look silly. I would make the animal noise and act like the animal and they would shout out what animal I was. Everyone was entertained. I'm just glad none of them were recording that!
With some of my Prathom 3 classes I also got them to fill in the missing letter of animal names or write the whole word out if I thought they could.
On the Tuesday of week 4 at school Lan invited us to go to an aerobics class with her. I wasn't sure how much I wanted to be sweating while people looked at me and called me farang but we agreed. We were instructed to walk down to the traffic lights, turn right and then walk until we heard the music and be there at 6pm. We decided to not be right on time as we knew Lan wouldn't be and we didn't want to arrive before her.
On the walk there we spoke about 2 things. One was surely it'll be in an air conditioned room like it would be at home. No one, not even Thais want to do aerobics without aircon. The second was my question of how are we going to understand the instructor, as surely it'll all be in Thai!
We arrived at the music. It was outdoors. OUTDOORS. There was a woman standing on a raised platform and about 50 women in rows copying her routine to Thai music. This was all in the car park of the post office and fire station. Infront of the fire trucks and behind the aerobics were some men playing football.
After a quick scan of realisation of where we were about to do aerobics I started to walk in. Joy however did not. 'No, I can't, it's not happening.' I demanded that we had to go in because it was too late Lan had seen us and we were here now! It was like a dog pulling back on it's lead when it doesn't want to go into the vets.
Anyway we went in eventually and joined in. We managed to stay incognito unt one of the moves required us to spin around so everyone saw the farangs and had a little giggle and a mutter about it!
Afterwards Lan asked me why I was red and seemed a bit puzzled. It may have had something to do with aerobics in 30 degree humid heat?! I realised though that most of the Thai women had retained their normal colour and had just sweat a tiny bit. How??!!
Lan then took us across the road for a much needed ice cold drink.
It was as refreshing as it looks. Delicious.
We spoke to Lan that night about our weekend plans as we wanted to go to Koh Phi Phi, an island on the west coast of Thailand. We asked if it would be possible for us to teach our Friday lessons in the week around our current time table so we could leave on Thursday night and have a bit longer there.
Lan got back to us the next day and said that there would be no school on Friday as the teachers were going to school in a town a few hours away to look at their new library and to get ideas on how to get the children interested in reading. Bonus! We booked our weekend and began to get very excited as we had heard good things about Phi Phi.
On Wednesday I had a lovely day of funny students and gifts!
The children all love these loom bands and make them every second they get the chance. My Prathom 2/5 class all got a bit excited and gave me loads of them at the start of the lesson. By the end of the lesson, the blood flow to my fingers was fairly uncertain.
That day me and Joy had the idea to let Team, Toop, Mean and Lin, the children who are always in the English room, watch Peppa Pig as it was in English it could benefit their skills. I'm not sure though who enjoyed it more, me or them... (ME!)
That evening I also decided to call it time on the rice cooker being untouched. Since Lan took us shopping for the house and bought us a rice cooker we hadn't used it because the security tag was still attached to the lid. I had enough and took our massive knife to it.
I didn't lose any fingers in the process so it was a success! Horray for DIY.
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