Tuesday - from staff and students

Hello, Amy (Miss Orford) here on day two. An emotional evening last night after the reflection of the first day. Definitely a few tears were shed on my part! All the team were in bed early, emotionally and physically drained, but were all up and raring to go at 8am breakfast. Feelings at breakfast were mixed, some couldn't wait to get back into it and some couldn't wait to get back into bed; but after a few motivational words everyone resumed their enthusiasm.

We arrived at Spurgeons Academy at 9.30am and teams had 5 minutes to collect their resources and went straight back into teaching their classes. After walking around and seeing our students teaching their students it became very clear how dedicated and how prepared they were as individuals and as a team. For me, this was a real moment of pride and I felt quite overwhelmed. James (Mr Maggs) and I were also astonished at the level of ability of some of the Spurgeons students; their mental arithmetic accuracy and speed was incredible – can you do 4060 divided by 8 and then times it by 5 in your head, in 30 seconds?!

Another moment that struck a chord for me, was when I went to teach the P7 and P8 students. Their theoretical science ability is astounding, for 13 year olds to know Biology such as the process of peristalsis was pretty incredible. I have brought over some equipment to do simple Science practical activities, and today I did paper chromatography with them. They knew what chromatography was, but hadn't ever seen it done. Their faces lit up with shock, awe and disbelief when a black dot of ink was separated into blue, yellow, red and green, and is an image that will stay with me.

In between the lessons of the older students, James and I had an opportunity to just be with the nursery children who are about 3 years old. We danced to music, they took our sunglasses and took photos and have the most adorable smiley faces! At one point at least 10 mobbed us and nearly pulled us over in fits of giggles. These are the moments that touch you and make your realise that what we are doing over here is making an impact in so many ways.

We don't have our lunch at Spurgeons, we are treated to a home cooked meal at Kenyanito's house. His wife Val puts on a lovely meal and we get some time for some relaxation and reflection of the morning, and also we re-group and pump ourselves up for the activities in the afternoon.  Their hospitality is greatly appreciated and we are always warmly welcomed.

As we draw into the mid-point of the experience this is where it gets hard! All your comments so far have driven us on, keep them coming, keep the support flowing...

GO TEAM KENYA!

Hi everybody, its now Ellie from Sheffield and Georgia from Lancing! We are going to hurry this, as Helen has told us we will be eating out for dinner today – whoop whoop!
We had another dusty day at Spurgeons Academy. All the classes had successful lessons, and even more successful activities. At break we enjoyed some more dancing, the whole school got into the yard and did the macarena. The moment the team got their cameras our we were swarmed by children all wanting photos with us and wanting to take photos.

I (Georgia) feel that our lesson went really well as we challenged them when asking them what mean, median and mode was, once we explained to them how to do, they were all off and steaming through the questions. The inside and outside activities were absolutely brilliant as in the Lion team we done a game where they have a balloon strapped to their ankle, and for inside it was card games.

Lunch at Kenyanitos was amazing, Spaghetti Bolognaise has never tasted so good! After lunch we had a talent show: the Elephants busted some moves, the Giraffes showed off their flips and the Lions topped it off with their circus skills!

Overall, we think the whole team had a brilliant day and are really looking forward to going back tomorrow – lets hope it all runs smoothly!