The Postal Service and the Prehistoric

It's been awhile since I've updated you on the intra classroom affairs.

Back when I was in the US, I had my assistant teach a Post Office project. It was something easy to do in my absence, and its field trip conclusion coincided with Valentine's Day, so all the children could mail their very own valentines. Aside from the post office books and valentine-making instructions I left behind, I am not quite sure what went on those nearly two weeks I was away. I did get to come back just in time for the field trip though. The best part of this was putting the valentines in envelopes. A few children were familiar with the process, but most showed a mixture of shock and disgust at my suggestion, not to mention demonstration. A few cried when I said, "your turn." Some, enjoying the flavor of the gluey flap, practically ate their envelopes and we had to give them new ones.

When we arrived at the post office, the assistant-teacher went inside to find the man she had made the arrangements with. 10, 15, 20 minutes went by. My students were sitting outside the post office window in a neat but noisy row on the corner of a busy street. We started a sing-a-long and attracted much attention from passers-by. When the neat but noisy row swelled into an impatient riot though, I rushed inside to see what was taking so long. Our tour guide, it seemed, was in South Africa. He would be back "soon." I wheedled a receptionist to find us someone else to do the tour, but she wouldn't even let the children come inside. "Please," I said, "They are only three. They cannot wait much longer and the street outside is very busy." "You shouldn't be in such a rush," she told me. The assistant teacher spat something back in Sesotho. I asked her to translate and she said, "The children are climbing up the walls." I turned and sure enough, they were climbing up the railings, pressing the chubby faces against the glass that muffled their screams.

Another 10 minutes went by an the receptionist finally let us in. The children, stir crazy, set about dismantling the post office in the few more minutes it took for our postal worker to arrive and begin the tour. The tour was dry to say the least, and I had to play translator (I certainly don't do baby talk to preschoolers, but his language and explanations were not digestible to three year olds). Then we made a 21 pint-size-person line (much to the fury of the customers that came in shortly after), and each child bought his or her own stamp and dropped their card in the appropriate box. While in line, the children began licking the outsides of their envelopes (possibly they were getting hungry by then) and I had to briefly confiscate a few  to save them from disintegration. "Wait for your stamps! You can lick your stamps!" A few of them, crazed by the impending taste of postal glue, sucked their stamps like candy and I had to scrape one off the back of Tlotliso's tongue with my fingernail. We thanked our very late tour guide with a deafening performance of postal/Valentine's Day songs, and surprisingly, the customers and employees looked a little wistful as we waved goodbye and made a noisy exit.

This week concludes a six week study of dinosaurs. I prefer projects that involve field trips, but their are no museums with fossils nearby and the dinosaur footprints you can find in the rocks here all involved strenuous hiking. Then again, after 4 field trips in 5 weeks, I needed a break from the stress and exhaustion that comes from organizing these adventures and subsequently taking 21 small children out into the world. So we got a little creative. With a tape measure we figured out how long various dinsaurs would stretch across our campus. We also made a life-size model of T Rex jaws and teeth on the floor and discovered, yeah, we could be easily swallowed. We played paleontologist and pieced together together cut up paper dinosaur skeletons and we simulated dinosaur battles (T Rex goes to bite Triceratops. Stick him with your horns, Triceratops! Stick him with your horns!) I very much stressed that dinosaurs have disappeared and cannot come back, and to the silent disapproval of the missionaries and staunchly Christian, that dinosaurs lived BEFORE people. Overall, I was very proud of the concepts they were able to grasp, and of their new dino-vocabulary (fossil, extinct, fierce, prehistoric). Instead of a field trip to conclude the study, we made The Preschool Dinosaur Book. This involved massive photocopying on my part, and you know me and appliances, a field trip probably would have been easier.

This afternoon I leave for Cape Town for my first ultra marathon (56 k, about 35 miles) in preparation for the big one (Comrades on May 30, 89k/56miles). As you probably know from reading recent posts, my knee is pretty angry at all these long distances as of late, and I can't seem to get more than 15 or 20 k in without a protest. So after another frustrating week of rest, I'm hoping for a fairly painless and non-swelling Saturday. Yesterday, in a typical short person move, I fell off of a shelf in the PE storage room. I landed squarely on my tailbone, with the plastic, wheeled trunk full of PE equipment I was trying to put away, landing squarely on my other knee. At least now I have two busted knees so if nothing else, I will limp evenly.