I LOVE my Job!!

When I’m not out with friends or with Dan, I’m doing one of two things, 1) sitting at home on the computer (aka Facebook, Pinterest or Youtube), watching shows and movies I downloaded, or 2) working. Since the first would totally bore you, I’d like to talk more about my job.

As I’ve said in past posts, I work at a private school here, in South Korea. I can truly say that I love my job. I have great coworkers and the kids I teach are so sweet, fun, and smart. I get paid to play with kids, and I like kids, so it’s really quite easy for me!

Today, I started the day on a lesson about the word “melting” with a group of Korean age 6 year olds (Kindergarteners). It was a simple lesson. First they looked at a page in their book that featured the work in a fun font with three pictures that showed things that were melting. There was a picture of ice melting, butter melting in water in a frying pan and one of something else I can’t recall at the moment. Anyway, after I asked them to read the word the way they thought it was pronounced, I said it a few times, and had each child repeat it back to me. Then we discussed each picture.

Amanda and Michael, the left page is the one about "melting"

In all of my classes each day, there are pictures to look at, especially with the younger kids. We always try to talk about them. It usually goes something like this: I point to a picture and say in my excited teacher voice, “Ok boys and girls. Look at this picture. What do you see? Who is in the picture? Where are they? Tell me anything you can in English.” I encourage my kids to speak in sentences but sometimes this actually discourages them, so then we just focus on saying any vocabulary words they know about that picture, even things like, “ball, pencil, daddy” or “2 girl and one boy” although they are getting much better at knowing when to add an s to the end of a word.

I used this same technique today with my Kindergarteners and they were able to give me pretty good descriptions of each picture. They said, “fry pan,” and “butter in water” for the first picture and for the second they said, “ice is melting.” After this, I got out the 5 small paper cups and ice cube chunks I grabbed from the cooking room earlier. I took the smallest piece of ice I saw in the cup and asked the kids what would happen if I put the ice in my steaming hot coffee cup. They told me, like the geniuses they are, that the ice would melt. This was our first little melting demonstration.

I then distributed the cups, one for each child and one for me, with an ice cube. Each cup had a different sized ice cube. We then decided who had the biggest ice cube, down to the smallest and I wrote their names on the board in this order. I had them guess whose ice cube would melt first and then we “tested” out their hypothesis. I told each child to hold the cup in their hands and slowly roll it to make the warmth from the hands move towards the ice cube in their cup. To avoid a mess, I told them they were not allowed to touch the ice cube, but they could touch anywhere on the cup.

Joseph showing me his ice and water

Even without touching the ice cube, they had a lot of fun with this, touching the bottom, which seemed to absorb the most water, checking their cube and that of the kids around them. They guessed correctly, again! Man, they are smart!

Here you can see some pictures of the kids hard at work trying to melt their ice cube. Just LOOK at Michael's face! Hahaha He always makes the BEST faces!

From L to R: Joseph, Michael, Alan and Amanda, holding the cups you see below

 After that we practice the presentation they will recite at the end of February for parents of perspective new students. Aren’t they adorable?!  My job is incredible :)

Michael :)

Amanda, too adorable for her own good

Joseph, so smart!

Alan :D

Well, what else can I say? This is how I spent the first 80 minutes of my work day! Does it get any better?! I think not! Hope your week is going this well! :)