We went out to our placements today with a new plan. Today we wanted to try to teach our classes in rotations, with a lot of art activities. - This didn't work too well. We all worked hard but the language barrier is very frustrating. School is very informal at our place and often the children just get up from their desks and leave. This is difficult with rotations because they would prefer one over the other and get up and move.

In the kindergarden/ preschool room there are 40 students ranging from 2 - 7 years of age. They sit in age lines and are very quiet. They learn English by copying what you say. We are tring to focus on what each of the alphabet letters sounds like. They enjoyed this. Trent, Jack, Maddie and Rhys are starting to tire of singing 'I'm a Little Tea Pot' as they start the morning with this song.

The grade one room has children from 6-11 years in it. Tessa, Brooke and Ty have been helping them to learn the names of the colours, body parts and basic addition. They are often seen out int he parade ground doing the 'hokey-Pokey'

Eden has become the geography teacher for the day and has tackled the challenge of describing the population per klm ratio for both India and Australia. Overall they finally understood that Australia is Big!

Bill and Hannah seem to have a great raport with the kids and make a good team. They have been introducing Australian Animals to the children.

Jack B is becoming an art teacher, the students made some aboriginal dot paintings of goannas today - very successful.

Nick has been helping the students to create tourist posters for India. He has done well and the posters will be finished and taped to the canvas wall for all to see by tomorrow.

All in all the challenges of teaching children with very little understanding of Hindi has been difficult, but we nightly brainstorm ideas and ask for the Hindi language we think we will need each day. We think we are getting better...mmm.

We are still floating in and out of bouts of delhi belly, Brooke has been down with it for the last couple of days and Jack N is still struggling a bit with gastro - lucky we have a good medical centre around.

Any way have a look at tomorrow's because it is Nick's birthday and there are a few surprises in store.

Judy