Friday, "fanmail" and fun || York day 7

I get up later every morning. I wake up at 7, but actually manage to roll out of bed about 20 minutes later. I blame this to the fact that I don't really have a structure in my mornings, but I know it's actually because my bed is too warm and I just don't wanna get out.

When I arrive at the infant school, we start with a weekly assembly. Every teacher has chosen one student who has done really well this week and all the other students have to listen to it. After that the students who have finished an after school activity get certificates. Then the headmistress asks Mrs. Rhodes: 'Do you wanna thank Kim as well?'. How to embarass Kim in 1 step: thank her in front of 180 students, 15 parents and a few teachers. How am I supposed to react to that?! 'She has helped in Class 6 and she came from Holland.' Yeah. We know that. Can we stop this? Please. Help. Pleh. (My parents and Tom are laughing now and the rest of the people who read this blog are like: 'pleh'?) Someone save me. Is it finished? Yes it's finished! I find it really nice that they thank me, it's just so embarassing...

In between assembly and the first break I get a lot of hugs, which is really sweet, but I'm terrible in dealing with those things... The kids first have a kind of maths test, where they have to beat their old score. There are 40 questions with either multiplication or adding and you have to answer as many as possible. I join in as well and I answer al 40 in about a minute. I would start worrying if I didn't answer all 40 of them... When we have break I go outside and we play Stuck in the mud, which is a kind of tag. A lot of kids play along, so it's really fun.

When we go back inside, we go reading (no phonics?) and Patrick has to read to me. He does the same as Jan did yesterday (House = H+ou+s+e > House) and when he's not sure about a word, he looks at me and I tell him how to pronounce it. I notice that, once I helped him with the pronounciation, he actually does it correctly, when he reads the word again somewhere else in the book.

Then we do phonics (meh) and the kids have a kind of test there as well. I join in as well and I have everything correct, phew, what would school think if I can't even spell 'stopping' in the correct way? Talking about words ending on 'ing', what I noticed is that some teachers pronounce it like 'ink'. So it goes like 'stoppink' and I don't know if that's to remind the children that there follows a letter after the 'n' or if that's their accent...

During lunchbreak I don't go outside but (you guessed it) read Harry Potter. After lunchbreak Year 2 goes to reception to read their selfmade stories to them. I can't really do anything, so I listen to the stories of the children. Luke really wants to read his story to me, so I listen to it. It's really... interesting. He wrote a story about the Gruffalo. On day 1, the Gruffalo was working in his garden and helped out a fox that got stuck somewhere. On day 2, the Gruffalo helped another animal and on day 3 the Gruffalo was working in his garden again, a pile of rocks fell on him and he died. I tell him I didn't see that coming and that I was surprised by the ending. He explains that he couldn't come up with anything else. Well... Besides author there are a lot of other jobs, so we don't have to worry about him.

When we get back to our own class, we split the class in 2 and one half draws some minibeasts (insects) and the other half draws them on the computer. When they are finished the children can play. After a certain time, the groups switch. The first round I was with the drawing group, so I join them to the computer room to draw on the computer. After a while I go back, together with Patrick, and I go play with some kids in the "restaurant", where I order a cup of tea and a cupcake from Livia. Eva and Rosie come to me and give me two drawings. Rosie has drawn me (a blue stickman with a blue triangle as a dress and dark hair) and she has written 'To kim Thank you to comeing to our school xxx ♡♡ love Rosie' and Eva has drawn some clouds and flowers on her piece of paper. When Mrs. Rhodes says it's time to clean up, I get 6 other drawings/thank yous which is super sweet. We go outside for playtime and we play tag with about 20 kids, I'm not even kidding. After a while a lot of kids were hugging me at the same time, so a teacher got mad at them, but I didn't really care, since no one got hurt or something and their intentions were good, but well.

When we get back in, it's story time. I read 2 stories to Beth, Elsie, Isabel, Stanley and Jay. I first read a story about a bad-tempered ladybug and then a story about some fish. When it's about 15:05, Mrs. Rhodes tells the kids that they can say goodbye to me now, so I'm being hugged by about 20 kids at the same time, so I'm just standing there saying 'My arms aren't long enough to hug all of you back at the same time, so just imagine I am'... I got a card from Mrs. Rhodes thanking me for my help and I left around 15:10, with a lot of goodbyes following me. It was super super sweet and I'm gonna miss those children. I'm also gonna put up all those drawing on the lockers in my room!

After school we go to Billy's grandma again where I, you'll never guess it, read Harry Potter. Kiera picks is up around 17:30 and we have dinner around 19:15. We eat spaghetti bolognese with meatballs and Billy and Finn are super hyper. It doesn't help that Kiera's there as well, so I'm just laughing a lot. Julie tries to calm us down, but she has no success... We do get a chocolate ice cream though.

After dinner, I go to my room to watch some YouTube and to write my blog. Now I'm just gonna read some Harry Potter. Believe me, I'm trying to finish it as fast as possible, because then I HAVE to read Pride & Prejudjce, since I didn't bring any other books with me. I'm really looking forward to Junior school next week and tomorrow we're gonna visit something from Harry Potter, so I'm really looking forward to the rest of my internship!

I'll write again tomorrow!

Some drawings have 2 sides, so some photos are from the same thing, but from different sides