May Day

The girls didn't have school on tuesday or wednesday for May Day, their labor day. they were great on tuesday. I was sick for most of the day so i stayed upstairs and slept on and off until about 3. then we watched a movie and played until dinner. but yesterday morning they were up and at it. by 8:30 they were running and screaming and crying. so i figured that would be a perfect time to give them some sort of activity.

I took a bunch of stencils downstairs to show them how to trace shapes, butterflies, all kinds of animals, Simba, stars, and a bunch of other things. as always it ended up being a bit chaotic. but at first there were just 4 or 5 of our little ones. Nephtalie and Schandline, who everyone calls Madame because she calls everyone Madame, didn't ever really understand. but the rest of the girls picked it up fairly quickly and seemed to have fun. when they finished tracing what they wanted in pencil i let them have crayons to color with. Im going to hang a few of them up downstairs today.

I've noticed that if they mess up on something, they say its ugly &immediately want a new piece of paper to start over. while its great that they want to try again, i can't give a girl a new piece of paper just because they have one stray mark. i showed them that you can erase things you don't like or turn your paper over on the back. if you're ever feeling sorry for the girls at House of Hope, don't feel too bad. they are so spoiled! haha its hard to explain things to them because i don't know enough kreyol. but thats also great motivation for me to learn more.

i also tried to help a few of the middle girls learn how to put together a puzzle. Kate had gotten a few out for the older girls and must've left one downstairs. it was a picture of Joseph as a boy with his coat of many colors. it was 25 pieces that were pretty large. the girls I was working with were between 7 and 9 and they had no idea what they were doing. i tried to explain the concept of edge pieces and corners but they didn't understand. then i tried to explain how you look for similar colors or patterns and that really didn't help. but eventually, with a lot of help, they all put it together at least once. were definitely going to work on that again.

Im feeling so much better. I have a terrible headache but my cold is gone! now for some breakfast and reading. maybe even a little more cleaning today. orevwa!