Handwriting lessons

Wednesday and Thursday were fairly quiet days as I was not on the buses. On Wednesday I had to go to the Vision Rescue office first thing to type up my notes for the teacher training session later on in the day. I was preparing a session on handwriting and specifically helping those children who cannot form letters and number. I felt this was also important for the those working with the under 5's so I invited them along also. I wanted to make the session practical so when the afternoon came I grabbed the paints, crayons, chalks and pens that had been recently purchased. I really wanted the teachers to develop ways to help the children from letters rather that making them struggle to write on their own. We talked about fine motor skills, coordination and muscle development so got the teachers trying out different techniques using the paints, crayons and chalks. We also had some modelling clay so a couple of them decided to get their hands dirty. We also looked at support children who's handwriting was more advanced and looked at techniques to help them.


In the evening, my mum and I had dinner at Meena's house. Meena is one of the teachers and she cooks great chapatis. We were also joined by Rajesh and his wife so it was a great evening, despite the fact my mum and I broke one of the beds when we sat down on it - Oops!! I felt even worse when I found out it was hand made about 18 years ago!


On Thursday I was invited to a meeting with Biju and Dr Pinto. Dr Pinto runs about 200 Ryan International Schools in India. He wanted to hear about the phonics I was teaching to the teachers. He is a really nice guy and he donated the first bus to Vision Rescue when they started 5 years ago. He was obviously interested in what I had to say about phonics as I now have to meet up with all the curriculum managers from his schools and talk to them about the work I have been doing. Hope it will come across well. My mum went of the second bus today so she could see the other locations the bus goes to. She got to visit Deonar 'The dumping Ground' where the rubbish tip is home for so many people. This is a place which really makes you think about how fortunate we are in life but also gets you asking how can a government allow people to live like this. The only positive thing about the way they live is that it helps the recycling process as so many of them trawl through the garbage looking for plastic, metal, paper etc that they can sell to the recycling companies.