Tutoring Highlights

Last weekend, Josephat got a space kit for his birthday--with constellation stencils, glow in the dark stickers, the works. The kids were totally taken with it, so I decided it'd be cool to learn about space in tutoring. I went through the kid books, found one about the solar system, one about the moon and then a bunch of National Geographics for visual aids. I went with the old technique of asking the kids questions about what they already knew, then throwing in new info and eventually having them spell new words that we'd learned.

It amazed me how naturally teaching came to me on that day. I've really gotten into the groove after all of this time with the kids! We talked about space, stars, the moon, planets, craters on the moon (and related the craters to volcanoes!), spaceships, and astronauts. The kids thought it was all very cool, and asked tons of questions. As we chatted about rockets, I asked the kid what makes a rocket fly. They had lots of ideas...eventually we settled on energy. At the mention of that word, Boazi looked up at me, his wheels obviously turning. "Like the energy that's in Andy's muscles?" he asked. (Andy runs the microfinance program at RVCV.) I couldn't help but laugh at the comparison. "Yup, like that energy," I laughed. And the kids were already chattering to each other about muscle-energy, and how big your muscles would have to be to launch a spaceship.

Nurturing Curiosity

I recently came across Christopher and Boazi hovering over one of the gutter pipes outside of Serengeti, watching water pour from the pipe onto the ground. "What are you guys doing?" I asked. Christopher looked up, excitedly. "Look!" he said. "This water can go through a leaf!"

They'd picked a leaf from a nearby plant and propped it up at the opening of the pipe. The water appeared to be flowing into the hole in the stem, through the stem's tube, and out toward the ground. "Do you know how that happens?" they asked me.

"How do you think it happens?" I asked back. Christopher proceeded to give me several explanations for how the water was going "through" the leaf. In the meantime, Boazi jumped up to pick more leaves to see if it would happen with them too. The kids' curiosity these days is really astounding. And the best part is that they ask questions about things now, so much more than they did when I first got here.

Learning about volcanoes!