Plays in Fourth Grade

When we reached a play in our reading curriculum, we took advantage of it and did something a little bit different. We decided to put on a show for the parents and younger students. I would have to say there were some naturally gifted actors shining in these plays. The students auditioned for their roles in the play about 3 weeks prior to the performance. Since getting their roles, they had to memorize their lines, find costumes, decide on a stage set, and put the whole thing together. The first play was a mystery story called the Ghost of Plymouth Castle. The actors all developed their characters very well and were able to stay in character even when things got quite humorous. Detective Blaylock Jones examines Lady Plymouth for clues to discover who the ghost in the castle is.
Datson seems to have a bug in his eye which Detective Blaylock Jones helps to discover.

When Datson meets Prunella an important clue is uncovered when she sneezes.

The second play the students preformed was called The King in the Kitchen. Kaitlyn played the King and acted her lines with much drama and expression capturing the attention of the audience. Once again all the actors stayed true to their characters and took their acting very seriously. Guard leads the peasant to the dungeon because he asked the king for the princess' hand in marriage.
King makes something in the kitchen with his eyes closed to prove to the cook he could make something better.
The duke tries the king's mixture only to discover later that it was actually glue.

Sunburns

Last year a group of girls and I joined a Nicaraguan Girls Volleyball League that plays on Saturday mornings. The season has started again and we have had four games already. We are 2-2 (2 wins, 2 loses). Many of the other teams are college teams who have joined the league for extra practice. That makes us the oldest players in the league and of course the only North Americans. We used to play in a neighbourhood park, but now the games are on a university campus. The game is made a little more interesting by a cable that runs over the outdoor court. If the ball hits the cable it is still in play. This happens several times a game keeping our hitters hanging in the air waiting for its unpredictable descent.

Coin Drive

In an effort to get our students excited about and involved with the new Fine Arts Center, the school hopes to build in the near future, we held a coin drive during the month of January. Each class kept a running total of the amount of money they brought in with themometers in the chapel area. Some days the competition was intense. All the classes brought in far more than we ever imagined they would and so more paper was added to make the thermometers taller. Students were encouraged to make sacrifices in their own lives in order to contribute money. Some students put in the few cordabas they would have used to buy a bag of chips or snack, another student drew some pictures and sold them for a couple cordabas, one student found things around the house she didn't want or need and sold them to other kids in her neighbourhood, and some students searched everywhere around their homes for lose change and even found some in the garden and in furniture. Two of our classes held a bake sale during lunch and recess and another class sold fruit. It was neat to hear and see their creative ideas for raising money.

In my class, during the weeks of the coin drive we had been giving thanks during our prayer time for all the money that had already been collected and were praying that it would continue to come in. My students' prayer was answered over and above their expectations when I recieved a letter in the mail a day before the end of the Coin Drive with 20 Euros in it specifically meant for the school. The majority of my mail is opened in the post office here, but this letter arrived on the wings of prayer and safe into our hands. We give God praise for his provisions and blessings. The total count of the coin drive is somewhere over $1,000. We need to finish the final calculations before we have an exact count.