Getting ready

For the last two months I've been getting a 'curiculum' ready for my time in Uganda. I've been re-creating a lot of what I taught in Thailand and India and putting it into Ugandan form. As in Thailand I don't have a formal job description in the sense of 'you will teach the ABC on day one, numbers on day two, colors on day three'. I'm taking the fun games and lesson plans that the girls loved in Thailand and putting them in some what of an educational order.
The going has been a bit slow; with two jobs, classes and sleep, I have little to no spare time. But! I have discovered this wonderful thing called coffee. (Yes. I am almost twenty four years old and am just discovering the wonders of caffeine. How did I function before this? I have no idea!). So if it looks like I don't have a bunch of stuff to show you, its 'cause I don't. But the important thing is I know what I need and how to make it happen in my head. If only there was a way to get whats in my head to a computer without having to use my hands.... like a plug or something. It plugs from your ear to the USB port in your laptop and your thoughts are downloaded... I like this idea!

I'm super stoked for this new material, A. because how much fun is it to color alphabet letters then do actual grown up work, like pay bills? B. because I learned a lesson while making flash cards in Thailand. There are no flash cards that have Asian children on them  there are no good quality flash cards with pictures of children who look like the girls I was teaching. All the flash cards I had in Thailand featured blond hair, blue eyed kids with rosy cheeks. I didn't realize this was an issue until I started to prep for Uganda. Maybe something in my brain clicked, but I sat there cutting out a white, blond child sitting on the floor and thought 'how are the kids in Uganda going to relate to this, this kid looks nothing like them.' I searched and searched, but all the flash cards I found featured Caucasian kids. I couldn't for the life of me find flash cards with pictures of African American children. This broke my heart. In my mind this is telling people that white is the only color that matters, if you can't even find flash cards of kids with different color skin, what is that skin tone worth?

So, I said screw it and made my own flash cards. Flash cards the kids in Uganda will be able to look at and say 'hey, that's me!' Kids they will be able to identify with.

Here is what I have thus far, like I said before its not much, but its a start! And if the picture looks a bit, ick, thats because it is. I don't have a camera at the moment so in order to get this picture I had to hold my laptop at an angle with one hand, move the mouse with a finger and pray I didn't drop the thing on the ground :p Hopefully my awesomely loving sister is going to let me take her camer to Uganda with me. Sshhhhh, I haven't asked her yet ;)