Do You Know What Day it is?!?!

Today is Hump Day here, the Geico commercial with the camel has a whole new meaning here!  I have yet to see a camel roaming around, but let me assure you I keep my eyes peeled!  Today was actually nerve racking.  I went into today not knowing what I was going to be teaching.  I can come up with stuff on the fly back home no problem and it is still relevant to what we are learning, however here it's another story.  I don't know where my students are ability wise and I was not sure of the resources I had in my classroom.  I asked another teacher that also teaches KG2 like me and she said that really in your first week in the classroom you don't teach what is on the lesson plan, because you are new.  That made me feel slightly better since I hadn't received the lesson plan for the week.  I still didn't have anything to do with my students during my lesson times.  I decided to have them watch some short videos on the letter A on a website we use here.  They loved it and have seen it before, so it was reinforcing.  Thankfully last night I had found a cool template for the letter A called Awesome A.  He is a superhero apple.  He has arms, legs, feet and a mask for his face.  I demonstrated to the kids what color I wanted them to color where.  A majority of them followed directions VERY well, and there were a handful who didn't, but that is the same with every classroom no matter where you are.  For math, I again showed short videos on counting to 5 and 10.  They know how to count past 10, but number recognition past 7 is a little challenging.  So in between each video I wrote a number anywhere from 1-10 on a whiteboard and had a student that was sitting very quietly show me how many that was with mini erasers (all I could find!).  They did very well with that as well.  I then had them for Science.  I had NO clue what to do with them for that, so I found some motion songs on the same website, so we danced and moved around to the wheels on the bus and head, shoulder, knees and toes.  They loved it, but my Arabic teacher (thankfully) cut me short to review with them what she taught this morning and passed out homework.  I accompanied them to music which was a total blast, they were able to play simple instruments, ran around based on the beat of the music that was played and sang songs.  they were then released and were crazy in the hallway until my Arabic co-teacher found us.  
Some things I have learned in the 3 days I have been with my class and in my school:
*I NEED to learn their names, but they are so different from what I've seen before and there are multiples in my class
*It may sound like the women speaking Arabic are yelling, but they aren't
*My Arabic co-teacher is awesome and doesn't let the kids get away with anything i.e. she ripped them a new one after breakfast because they weren't settling down and ready to learn English
*Everything takes time, they aren't going to master what I teach them in a day, since it is their second language, it will take time
*The security guards at school live on campus
*Women greet each other with a handshake and sometimes a kiss on the cheek
*There is an adult toilet in the student bathrooms, but not a separate bathroom
*The boys and girls use the same bathroom
*Their language is beautiful!
I am absolutely beat right now, I think it may be from all of the stress of being in a new place, new school where I don't understand what they are saying nor do they really understand me, and I am still in a hotel.  So, I am going to pop in a movie or watch some FRIENDS and lay in bed.  Hopefully I'll be able to get ahold of someone to talk with!
Enjoy the pictures and notice how well they stay in the lines while coloring!  I was very impressed!

Awesome A

Awesome A