El Bichito: Week of June 17th

Week of June 17th

By Dane Smart and Brennan Howick

             Hello all, we here to report to you another fun filled week at El Bichito.  We can’t stress enough the importance of knowing mathematics for everyday use.  Although the children are learning math in school, we still get children coming to us telling us they don’t understand their math homework.  We put together some lessons that would be fun and educational. 

            This weeks activities entailed: a multiplication race in which the children competed to see who could fill out a multiplication table the fastest, a grid axis layout where each point represented a letter and the children needed to decode different messages, and the last activity was a math bingo game which the children have always been fond of. 

            Included is a picture of one of the students named Aurora who has loved the El Bichito book check out program.  She never misses an opportunity to check out a new book to take home and read. On this occasion she came up to Brennan with the book she check out the day prior. When asked if she had finished the book, she replied that she had and then subsequently opened the book to read her favorite parts.  The book check out program continues to grow each week as more children come to exchange the books read from earlier in the week for new ones.  It is exciting to see their reading skills progress, even in the short time we have been here. 

            As part of our rewards program we treated the children to a game of soccer at the local park called, “The Garden.”  The children are so passionate about this sport and show it when they are on the field.  It is a joy to see how motivated they can be in something that is so important to their culture and something they enjoy so much.