Busy, Kool-Aid and Yarn

Sorry for the lack of entry last week; it was the first full day of school, and though I was ‘off,’ I didn’t end up getting much down time. I had a bunch of copying to do to get set up for the term, a geography lesson to prepare (I’m teaching geography this term as the regular teacher is on furlough), and a host of small ‘fires’ to put out before I could collapse into bed late that night.

I just survived my first weekend on; talk about tired! There were 6 adults running the whole station for a day and a half, and by the time I got back from prayer meeting last night I was one tired teacher. The weekend went pretty well though, all things considered. God is good!

One of the fun things I did was dye yarn with kool-aid with my grade 3 and 4 handwork group. The big sinks in the bathroom made an ideal yarn soaking location,

and then the girls had fun smooshing their bags of yarn to mix the color in.

We laid them out behind the upper school where they would bake all afternoon in the sun (why I wait until this time of year for this activity),

and when I went around after dishes that evening all the water was almost totally clear, and I had 10 bags of kool-aid smelling wet wool to rinse out and hang up to dry. I’ll get them wound up for the girls over this week, and then they will be able to start using them to make either a hat or some simple fingerless gloves. They are so excited!

One of my usual weekend chores is laundry, so I was working on that as well Saturday afternoon. I do my personal laundry and most of the clean up laundry (microfiber cloths and cleaning cloths) during handwork, and then get it all hung up and folded ready for Monday morning. This time of year I really appreciate how fast things dry! Even heavy bathmats are bone dry in a few hour’s time. Though it’s still really dry season, we had two lovely rains of 5 and 8 cm last week—a real relief from both the heat and the growing dust!

Parting shot- the new quote over the door of my classroom!