Another Week!

            Another week has come and gone! Oh, how the time flies, and memories are made. Last week tests went very well! Many of the students that have struggled to most in the years past were able to rise up and do so well! In fact some of them reached to the top of the class! These little victories made more than my week! Their faces, filled with pride, with success, and with joy will stay with me forever! Many of these students always had it in their head that they could never succeed so well in math or science. Yet with the Lord’s grace and blessing on me and my students we were all able to reach to new heights! Thank you so much for all of your prayers with this week!

            Art club went very well on Wednesday and yesterday! Wednesday was our second day on drawings for the advanced students and we tried several different techniques! We loosened up our wrists and tried drawing from a far with long rulers. Tomorrow we will continue with some more drawing techniques. As for our younger art club we worked on making collages, by combining ripped up pieces of colored paper. It was a lot of fun as you see with these pictures! We even tried shading with different shades of the color!

           We are now studying life on earth, what allows it to be livable, how organisms adapt and develop, and other components of our changing world! In math we have moved on to computations, multiplications, and addition and subtraction properties. We have already made the water cycle in a jar, are beginning a research project on different organisms, and will dive into using microscopes!!!!

Firsts:

Sorry nothing too much to report! I was able to spend so great time with other teachers and students after school. It was a long week with all the tests, but a good week!

Prayer Request:

- As always please pray for my students, their parents, other teachers, and the new teachers coming.

- We have been paced with challenges as have the students and we all need to strength and wisdom in these situations.

 

See you later, Gator! And if not Hakuna Matata.

I have taught these phrases to my students and I have to say I have been rubbing off on them! Everyday my 4th graders say goodbye to me individually with See you later Alligator! It truly brightens my name to here this phrase ring out in more than 5 different accents with smiles looking up at me! As for Hakuna Matata…. Those who have taught children or ever worked with them, know how many questions these students always ask about what comes next/what time is it?/etc. To help the students stay on task and prevent always asking questions like these, from the start I replied “Hakuna Matata, don’t worry about it.” Now my students not only stay more on task, but also will answer their own questions if they start with Hakuna Matata!

I wish that you all could meet my students for they are wonderful! Each one is so precious and special! They each have a piece of my heart. I just received a new student, today! She seems to be jumping right in, but it is a challenge to have her start almost a month after the rest of the students. Still several students have already taken her under their wing. As most of these students have been together since kindergarten, they could be a super tight group. But thankfully my students seem very inviting and welcoming her in. Having students come in and out of the classroom throughout the year is very common and often with little notice. This can be due to missionaries going on furlough, trips to their home country, etc. This is definitely an added challenge, for which I would greatly appreciate prayer.

(The pictures you see include their planet projects and presentation, group work, and other activities)

Firsts:

- First time going to a doctor in Paraguay (this was required for the Paraguay government to receive the needed paperwork to stay more permanently). While the information sheet was in Spanish (a little difficult), it was only a quarter of a page (a great blessing compared to US sheets)! (By the way this took nearly two hours for all of us (the new teachers) to get there, sign in, be seen, and return. All of these visits and needed paperwork is both very expensive and time consuming.

- First week of Art club! I have started an art club after school on Mondays (elementary) and Wednesday (junior high and high school). The first week I have about 8 on the first Monday with students from 3-5th. It was wonderful and a lot of fun to be able to get to know students I don’t have and to do art at a slower pace than during school. Wednesday, I had 6. I loved being able to have this time with the older students to develop the skill and interests that they enjoy. This Monday, I was surprised with 14 students and the new 6 students being pre-k to 1st! Ahhhhhhh! Thankfully I was blessed with an older student from the highschool showing up to sign up for Wednesday and was able to stay and use her service hours (required service project for ministry for each year)! It is great to have an extra set of hands. As the art club continues to be popular it has become the most popular club and I can only guess how many will show up tomorrow!

Prayer Requests:
- Please pray for the previously mentioned prayer requests and for those mentioned above!

I blinked and a month has past!

           I have officially been in Paraguay for one month! School is really starting to feel comfortable and the students and I are having a wonderful time. I just had another student join our class and he has easily fallen right into the routine. We are currently studying Astronomy! We have been able to really explore to miracles and precision of space and how incredible the Lord’s design is for us! We have done experiments, designed planets, made posters, mini research projects, taken virtual field trips, acted out the solar system, and so much more! The students’ passion for these subjects and their excitement and energy makes it a joy to go to school every morning. We also have been studying place value in math and working on application and real world uses of this math. We have related this math to astronomy, played review games (i.e. place value bingo), had rotating centers, and so much more. With the lower English comprehension, I have really tried to teach hands-on with as much visuals as possible.

Firsts:

- You know you have been in Paraguay too long when a student gives you a gift of a little Korean key chain and you are almost as excited to receive the zip lock bag that it came in as you were to receive the key chain. (ZipLocks are hard to find and very expensive).

Prayer Requests:

- Praise! We have a new teacher coming for 3rd Grade! Please pray for her transition, paperwork, etc. Also please pray as she will be jumping in to the school year that is already in the process.

Officially the First Week of School Completed and I finished in my Third Week in Paraguay!

        Three weeks completed! Time has flown, I cannot believe that I have already been in the country for this long. I love my classes and my students! They are all precious and wonderful students. I have been faced with different challenges as I my students not only have a wide range of academic abilities, but also a wide range of English comprehension that does not mirror their academic level. Still we had a wonderful week and both the students and I were quick at learning and adjusting to each other and our new environment. We have had wonderful science experiments, math games, and Bible activities already. You can see these in the pictures shown here!

Firsts:

- FIRST FULL WEEK OF SCHOOL!

- First time ordering Pizza from Pizza Hut in Paraguay! We had an apartment game night, and the pizza was cheaper and pretty good in comparison. Though I must admit I stuck with the safer choice of pepperoni and not the interesting choices with peculiar meats and flavoring.

- First time getting a Paraguay taxi! (Not as scary as you might think)

- First time buying cereal! I finally found a cereal that was not pure sugar and not $10+ a box. I love honey nut cheerios (or Honey Nutos) for a great price of $1.50 a box.

     o Other great finds:

           Worchester Sauce

           Skim Milk

           Beef (that I actually think I know what cut of meat it is near and dared to buy other than chicken or a well ground beef)

- First time making empanadas! They were great and are a very traditional dish here in Paraguay! The type that I made were with a spiced ground beef, onion, olives, raisins, and a slice of hard boiled egg. I will have to bring the recipe back for you all to try!

- First gift from one my new students (a pretty painting)

- First note from my one student who is new to the school! (It truly made my week and reads as the following:

Dear Miss Weber:

         Thank you for all the help (Because I realy need)
You are so good tiching and you are beautiful and the best teacher I ever had. God give (I think she meant gave) you a helpful hart and helpful person. You are pacient to. And you have so many ideas fun.

                                         Love (her name)

Prayer Request:

- Please pray for my students, their safety, that I will be able to show God's love and light to them in new ways every day, and that I can reach them academically in the best way possible!

- Please pray for wisdom for me when communicating with my students, their parents, and with other teachers. I have been blessed to begin building wonderful relationships with them!

- Please pray for the school and the country as they are both going through new changes.