Rover's Game Day

Hello again! Didn't think I'd be here again this quick, did ya? :) Well, here I am anyway.

So, it's Tuesday night here and I'm having a pretty good week so far. The biggest contributing factor has been not having to teach on my lonesome. As I may have mentioned before, we have a very small school. There's one teacher for each grade (K-6), Il-kyu for science and as my English co-teacher, and myself. Everyone is pretty darn busy all the gosh darn time. A lot of times this means Il-kyu can't be there in class with me in the afternoons. Or can only be there for a short time. The language barrier being what it is, and not actually being a licensed, certified, and well studied teacher, this can be a hard time for me...

This week Il-kyu has been there for all the afternoon classes. Everything has went very smoothly. Even those pesky 6th graders seem somewhat interested in class for once! Maybe I'm catching my stride? Likely it's a little of that and having Il-kyu there to help guide and interpret.

Monday afternoon we had a 6th grade class. In the lesson we were learning about some verbs like, play, throw, run, etc... There was a little story that talked about different games kids play around the world. In one of the countries kids played a game that was hopscotch under a different name. The kids were excited because they also play that here. Il-kyu told them if we can get through our work we could go out and play it.

They have never worked so fast. Ever. We played hopscotch and it was a good time. That led into the top class. We thought it might be wise to have an outside activity with them. Being the best and brightest, they surely deserved it.

To preface the lesson we introduced them to many American kids games like freeze tag, red rover, duck duck goose, and hopscotch. We then challenged them to come up with games of their own (as teams). So, they came up with three games. They were mostly explained in Korean, so I didn't really catch much of them.

After that it was outside time. The kids were infatuated with the idea of red rover. And so it goes...


They must've enjoyed themselves because I saw a large group playing again on lunch today!

For dinner we had hamburgers and Melissa's beloved smash potatoes.

Smash Potatoes:
1) Boil potatoes
2) Remove from water, put on cookie sheet.
3) Mash the top of the potatoes down just a little bit
4) Douse in olive oil
5) Throw on some rosemary and other spices to taste
6) Bake that shit until crispy
7) Eat!

Never thought I'd be sharing recipes!
**Mel edit: if you want the actual recipe, let me know. I will email it to you. I realize the above is not detailed enough to grant you my supreme smash potato power. Aaron knows nothing of my ability to cook.**

This Friday we have Sports Day! The kids go out and run around doing marathons and the like. To day was practice. They spent a good amount of time warming up. I was outside watching and also charged with snapping some photos. First I'll present a few photos of the grounds (now with more Spring!) then you can watch the kids bustin' butt. :)

Damn bastard plants are everywhere! Even here in South Korea! I never expected to see them here!

The grounds are growing (pun!) quite gorgeous as the weather warms. You can see more of them in the following pics with the kids working out






KICK






Ah yes, today's top class. Today we had them play one of the games they made. I picked the team that seemed most enthusiastic/confident about their game and we went from there.

I believe it was called 'find the chameleon'. Basically one picks a kid to be 'it'. Our kids used a marathon round of rock, paper, scissors. Then said kid moves off in front of the group with his/her back to them.

Next, the group forms a large circle and nominates a member to (secretly) be the chameleon. 'It' kid joins the circle in the dead center. Then the chameleon makes actions and the rest of the group follows. 'It' kid has to figure out who the chameleon is. It was actually a pretty fun game :)








We followed that up with a little more Red Rover. And that was school for the day!

Oh yes, a couple more items....
Il-kyu and I discussed ways to engage the class better. We decided to take the tables out of the circles and move them into the above positions. That way, everyone's eyes are (theoretically) always on the teacher. Hopefully it'll help a bit.

One other item was that Il-kyu wanted to have a song to start out classes with. We usually start with a 'hello', 'good morning', 'how are you', 'how's the weather today' type of dialog. He challenged me to come up with a song built around these key items.

That was on the bus this morning. I had finished before the first class.
Once I had the melody set we introduced it to the 4th and 5th grades. They seemed to like it! I'll try to catch a video when I get a chance so you can hear my rockin' tune ;)

For dinner I had a bolt of inspiration. I made pork meatballs and Mel made spaghetti (thanks for the sauce sis!). I've never made meatballs before. I just figured if I crumbled some toast, chopped up the bit of pork we had, and added some egg I might get some meatballs. It appears that that was the correct supposition. Yay me!

So, there's some back-to-back blog action. Now it's time to title this sucker and hit the hay.

Aaron