PROJECT UPDATES: WEEK 4

I am down with fever this weekend but it did not prevent me from taking up 2 hour classes on both saturday and sunday. I was surprised to see the excitement in children in order to study and learn things. Most of them came up to me and asked me to take up classes in morning as they are more fresh and ready to study at that time and in evening they are more excited to be with their parents but somehow I managed to convince them as the weather is hot in the morning and it gets difficult to teach them under the sun. Also, more children are expected to join the classes as more labourers are going to come come up for work on the site and will be living up in the same area.

New Admissions: Raj and Rani
--Raj belongs to level 3 as he has been to school earlier and knows numbers, english and Hindi alphabets and addition and subtraction sums.
--Rani belongs to level 1 as she does not know anything and has never been to school.

Volunteer for week 4: Anchit, Kishan and Neerav
This week chocolates were given to the 2 most neat girls and boys:
Girls: Aseyan and Rajrana
Boys: Hari and Laxmi Prasad
Children were also motivated to brush their teeth regularly and be clean.

--Chocolates were are given to Dhananjay and Raj for their attentive behavior and learning ability.

As told earlier this week 2 NSIT students joined us and they interacted with the kids on Wednesday and taught them music. One of the volunteers Neerav knows guitar and had sung some good numbers in front of them which excited all of them. I could notice this excitement on Saturday also when they all were asking me where is kishan bhaiya and they themselves started singing and dancing without even me saying anything.

Level 1:

Hari is able to write well now and has moved to level 2 now.
Level 1 now includes kavita, kavita-2 , Rani and Najrana.

>> They were taught how to write, hold and move pencils and make different lines, numbers and curves.

Level 2:

1. Writing of alphabets from A-Z was taught and most of them are able to write well with few mistakes.
2. Revision of numbers from 1-20 was done.

Level 3:

1. Practice and review of whatever previous knowledge Raj has was done for him.
2. Dhananjay was taught 1 digit and 2 digit addition and 1 digit subtraction sums without any borrow. He is able to do them well and the exercise on writing of small English alphabets was also completed.

One important thing which I observed in all the kids was that most of them know know how to speak counting from 1-20 and also speak few alphabets but they are not able to recognize these numbers and alphabets when given on paper. Same goes for English alphabets. We need to focus on this aspect more and devote more time to make them memorize and recognize numbers and alphabets.

Next week 2 more NSIT Volunteers will join us and all of them will be taking classes in groups of 2 on Wednesday and Friday. On Saturday me, Abhishek and kunal will be reviewing their work and will teach the children about health, cleanliness and hygiene.

One more thing, while I was teaching them A for Apple they all started to ask for apple and now all of them want to eat an apple and want me to bring it for them whenever I meet them next. I hope I will be able to make the arrangement soon. If any volunteer is interested in sponsoring the fruits please write back to me.

And before I finish, let me mention the most touching moment for me this week. It was when I finished the class and said bye to all of them they were very excited and keen to shake hands with me. They shook hands with me once, twice, thrice till I myself didn't take my hands away. Never have children been so excited to shake hands with me, they make me felt as if I am a very important person for them like a star :) ...shayad zyada ho gaya... Anyways a good weekend both for me and the children.

Thanks