Day 5 Info Day Success!

Today we held our first informational session with the kids. It was nice to come to school this morning having already started to get to know the kids. They were excited to see us and ready to join their teams again. This made getting their attention at lesson time a little easier. Admittedly, they had balloons on the brain from yesterday and kept asking for them. To organize, we split the students into two groups with four leaders leading specific stations.

Nhan, Mai, Kenny, and I worked inside teaching the kids the basic function of the heart. Nhan drew an outline of the body on the dry erase board in the front of the room and explained the direction of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. He had the kids locate their heart and guess the correct size, which is about first size. The kids followed along by drawing a body on their paper and calling out the names of body parts in English and Vietnamese.

Next we brought out stethoscopes and everybody got a chance to listen to their heartbeat. Tommy, Ann, Vuong and U led the other half of the students.

They drew two huge bodies on the ground in chalk. They taught the kids the names of each body part in English and Vietnamese. The kids then had to run to the
part of the body that was called out in English. If they were standing on the wrong body part they were out and the last kid standing was the winner. They really enjoyed this activity and burned a little excess energy. They also taught the children how to measure their pulse and the difference between resting and active heart rate.

We then regrouped and for the remaining sensory and hygiene lessons.We began with a quick memory game that used pictures of body parts and an associated hygiene product. We had twelve students stand in the front of the room with laminated pictures and they only turned around when chosen by their classmates. When a match was picked the two students left the line and the game continued until all the matching was finished.

Next we tried a game to show how germs spread by using glitter and hand lotion. We should have pulled aside a couple of students and stuck glitter to their hands with lotion and let them naturally spread glitter to other students. Instead we picked randomly within the group and the kids went a little crazy. Vuong has scratches on his neck to prove it. The point of the game was lost for a bit, but recovered when Nhan explained how germs spread and the importance of hand washing.

Once the students calmed down, we did our sensory lessons as one big group. We talked very generally about how the eye contains receptors for color and that you can tire them by staring at one color too long. We had the kids stare at bright pieces of paper for thirty seconds and then a white sheet of paper, so that they would see a different color because of saturated cones.

We decided to have a fun water relay activity before lunch. The blue team won this time, but green is still the best. The regular teacher roped the kids back in and got them organized, so that we could teach hand washing and explain the point of the glitter and lotion game. After they were all cleaned up, they got to eat and play for a bit.

Our last lesson of the day was handing out toothbrushes and teaching them how to brush properly. The kids were pretty good at it already and hopefully make brushing a daily routine.

After school, we rested and had a great seafood dinner by the ocean. We got to see the sunset and the moonrise at once. It was very beautiful and we are all looking forward to some time on the beach this weekend. Time for a bed! - Alice