Los Ninos

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We just finished working a full week at the Guadaria (children´s day care center) and it has been a very interesting and exhausting experience so far. Every day we have to take a bus 30 minutes to a very poor area of Quito where we then walk 10 minutes up a huge hill to the small day care center. There are about 35 kids there, ages ranging from 2 to 9, and all of them are put together in one group. We arrive right after they finish their breakfast, usually bread or a hot milky drink. The families pay about $7 a month and the kids get breakfast, a snack (usually a orange or apple) and lunch (soup). When we arrive, the kids are always so excited to see us and they are all so cute. I have been working on getting to know all of their names and for the most part I know all of them, but probably don´t pronounce their names correctly. The very first day the other teachers just left us alone with about 20 kids and we had no idea what to do with them, and it was even harder to communicate with them with our limited amount of spanish. So we got out some paper and crayons and drew with them and tried to use our vocab words such as fruit, animals and other food. After they were tired of the drawing they pretty much just went wild and played with all the toys in the room. They were also putting everything in their mouth and hitting and fighting with eachother. Over the last week we have tried to learn words such as share and dont hit but it seems to be hopeless with them and they continue to do whatever they want and don´t have much discipline. Since then, on other days we have tried to have more planned activities such as making tamborines with plates and beans, decorating paper plate masks, necklaces with noodles and leaf etchings. We also have tried to instigate games such as simon says, and red light green light. We also help them to wash their hands before meals and after going to the bathroom. We also have to help some of the little ones go to the bathroom and Rachel has already been pooped on and peed on. We only work 2.5 hours but we are drained by the end and then we have an hour for lunch and then take 2 hours of spanish class. Every day I am frustrated that I can´t communicate well with the kids but I think they are all so cute. I´ve taken special interest in some of them and during play time outside I have been trying to practice math with them since some of them don´t even know spanish numbers past 10. With on little girl I have been teaching her colors in English. Each day I give her a new english word and the next day right when I get there I ask her if she remembers the word and she is so excited to tell me what I taught her the day before. Each day is full of frustration and I don´t feel like I am making as big a difference as I would like to make, but I am enjoying getting to know the kids and working on my spanish and learning that I could never work with kids that age as my career, I give a lot of credit to those that can. But we have been taking each day as it comes and I think mainly the kids really enjoy the extra attention that we are giving them each day.

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Photos

the kitchen
making soup for lunch