Before harvest and holiday begin

The last three days of August were nice and we finally got a few full days of sunshine. According to the school rules, children should bring a bottle of water with them to school every day, which, of course, they don’t do unless we actually enforce the rule. To make this work, we started with random checks, but instead of punishments, we gave out small sweet rewards to those who did bring a bottle. This turned out to be a success, so now even kindergarten kids bring their own water bottles. This requirement then turned into a crazy game...

when kids used pins, borrowed from the notice board, to make holes into the caps of their bottles; now they spend their breaks outside fighting water battles. Because it stopped raining and the weather is now in fact beautiful, these games have brought lots of fun and enjoyment. Every now and then someone leaves a piece of clothing at school, which they left there to dry; then we keep finding jumpers, shirts, t-shirts and even trousers that nobody is missing. Sometimes we find an extra pair of shoes in the school as well because kids like running around barefoot these days.

In the kindergarten, we have had an epidemic of using the word “baby” to denote everything small. The children normally use “baby” for animal offspring, such as the popular “baby horse”, but now we have baby everything. In the pictures that children have been drawing and painting recently, pairs of things have been appearing: a „helicopter” with a “baby helicopter” next to it, a “house” with a “baby house” or a “flower” with a “baby flower”. I must admit that I found some of these pictures greatly amusing and the kids won’t let themselves be talked out of it, so they use it with even more frequently and with greater pleasure and I only hope that our KG babies grow out of this “baby” obsession, because our first-graders are starting to catch this baby fever from them.

On Friday 27th August the children sat their August tests and did better than they did in July, which made us very happy and children now deserve their holiday, which is 30th August to 3rd August 2010. But because harvest is now in full swing, most of the children, especially the older ones, will be helping out in the field. The advantage of this way of spending holidays is that the children spend the days on fresh air and their inexhaustible energy and temperament are put to use for the common good; hopefully they will not come back from holidays too exhausted. Meanwhile, we are using this week for more small repairs around the school building and for finishing the storehouse, so that it is not only the children who are working hard – which is only fair…

Back to articles