planting seeds...

Hello everyone, just a quick post today.  

I went to see our new school on Friday and thanks to Ignite, the team who came in January, the building is complete - its been painted inside and outside.  I took my camera but in the discussions with the watchman I forgot to take pictures inside, so next time............  

one of the outside doors

On Friday when I was in my office and all the children were outside playing, this child came and said that she wanted to read a book (the books are all in a bookcase in my office, due to space).  She sat for about two hours looking at books and talking to herself and occasionally coming to show me something.  I get very excited when I see early learning in action!!

 This morning I went to church where we had a really uplifting service.  Then I came home and had a walk around the garden as I have been away for a few weeks.  Its great to see so many thing ready!

rhubarb

granadilla (passion fruit)

pumpkin

guava

guava on the tree!

lettuce

strawberries (not yet ready)

carrots

and green pepper

I was thinking I should set up a stall in the market!!!

Only a couple of minutes later a downpour came on - this was looking out my back door - it was just a river!

I like this next photo - its the rain falling from the roof with the pine trees behind!

and to finish for today I leave you with this lovely picture - while I was in the garden I was thinking about my job as Early Childhood Co-ordinator and thinking how we are also planing seeds as we allow our children to develop in the proper manner!

Wishing you all a good week,


Blessings,
Diane

Exhausted after the graduation!

Hello everyone once again to my blog!  The workshop is over and I came home this morning exhausted - its been a long two and a half weeks!  We have been having severe thunderstorms and really heavy rains over the last days and the Cassia trees are out in full bloom at present.  They look beautiful but unfortunately they don't agree with my asthma!  

The workshop continued this week without any major hitches.  We had a lot of interactive time with the participants and they really are a great bunch!

We have a session on special needs in the early years, and here at the Synod we have a Special needs department and a resource centre at the primary school, so it was good to have Mr Gondwe to come and facilitate our session.

If you have been following this blog you will know that we have play areas in our early childhood centres, and during our training we ask participants to make samples of play and learning resources so the following pictures are some of the things they made.  These resources will be kept by the trainers to show as samples when they themselves are training caregivers in the villages.  As you will appreciate not all of them are artistic or creative, but we have many wonderful play materials!

for the reading area - books and pictures

Manipulative area - to refine fine motor skills

Musical instruments......some amazing guitars...

nature corner with seeds, sand, stones, water and plants

art area with our locally made paint, and of course clay

the dramatic area -with lots of dolls, but being gender sensitive there are boy and girl dolls!!

the female on the ox-cart

the male doll pounding!

 On Saturday morning we had the graduation for our new ToT's, and it was great to have the 'veteran ToT's' to join in the celebration!  

myself and fellow facilitator Macleod

drama by the participants

 We were privileged to have Rev L N  Nyondo our General Secretary as the Guest of Honour, accompanied by Rev M M Banda our Education Secretary.

The newly graduated ToT's with their certificates...

Here below you can see all the ToT's together, those who graduated in 2008 and the newly graduated.  Only two were missing from the photograph!  Its wonderful that we now have at least one ToT in every Presbytery of our Synod, so we hope that Early Childhood Development will really change and that many young children will benefit from our efforts!  We now have a total of 31 ToT's!

I came home from Ekwendeni this morning after saying bye to them all.  I am tired and for the first time in many years, I had a nap in the afternoon!  Tomorrow its back to work again to write reports and get caught up on things that have arrived on my desk in my absence! 

Continue praying for our country.  There is much instability - fuel shortages are worse than ever and prices continue rising daily!  And yet people keep smiling! 

Wishing you a good week where ever in the world you are.

Blessings,

Diane

At the workshop.....

Hello everyone

Its been a long time.........life has been busy as I have been preparing for our Trainer of Trainers workshop which is now half way through!  Preparations were hectic as we make a lot of materials at the workshop and so we had a lot to do especially the week before we began.

 It was good to have my two trusted assistants to assist in the preparations...Nicolas and Foster.........they did a great job.

The workshop began last Monday and I have three facilitators to assist me in preparing these Trainers to work in the community.  Here you can see Maureen reading a story to the participants.

and MacLeod and Andrew who are all doing a great job and have a wealth of experience!

Not forgetting myself of course......

The participants are having a lot of fun, making new friends and learning more than they ever imagined about Early Childhood Development.  They come from all over the north representing 17 Presbyteries.  On Friday the ToT's who are already serving in Presbyteries will come to join them for 4 days!

group work

a healthy baby????

drama

games

materials which we would class as rubbish, but from which we make play materials for our centres

making glue from Cassava

making paint

green paint from leaves

red paint from flowers

moulding clay

Improvising...... we needed a sieve......

and as usual a photograph of me waving my arms about!

Some of our learning materials

Its been a good workshop so far.  We are in Ekwendeni at LISAP where the food is excellent and the environment is good for learning.  On Friday this group will hopefully get a certificate from the Ministry so that they can go out as Trainers of Trainers.  But as I told them at the weekend this is only the beginning - they have so much more to learn and I hope they stay with us and support our Early Childhood Programme.  They are all volunteers and so if they receive paid employment they are likely to move on - and who would blame them.  All our caregivers in the ECD centres are volunteers too, so life is tough if you don't get paid for your job!

Please continue to pray for your country, it seems the fuel queues are back again after a few weeks of things being a bit easier.  On Saturday when I was going back to Mzuzu there was a horrific minibus accident where I believe 4 people died - the bus had overturned and a colleague from Mzuzu was on it.  He is presently in hospital recovering.  Please pray for safety as we travel on the roads especially in the rains where there is a lot of mud and roads are slippy.

Wishing you all good week,

Diane

the daily grind...

Hello everyone, and thank you for the many compliments I receive about this blog!  It makes doing it all the more worthwhile!  Keep the comments coming!

This past week has been quite mundane in the general run of things.  Due to one of our teachers being off sick, and another one with a death in the family, I was in the class all week which was great in one way but left me way behind in other work.  It is good to see how the teachers are doing in the class, and to see how the children are progressing developmentally.  I must say I was quite impressed with what was going on in general. 

Some of our lovely children always keen to have their photo taken!

This has been a difficult week with many funerals - three members of staff at the synod had to attend family funerals this week, and one of our young ministers also passed away which was a great shock to everyone.  Rev Baxter Mkandawire was a vibrant young minister with a passion for children's ministry and he will be greatly missed.   

On Saturday morning (yesterday) I had a seminar with the teachers from our school just to remind ourselves about early childhood and to discuss the way forward in our school.  It was a successful meeting despite the weather - it had been thunder and lightning storms during the night and in the morning it was really wet.  I was fine going to school though because the Ignite team brought me some raincoats........ (yes, not one, but many....to be sure, to be sure!!)

Its the time of year when we have rain and we have heat and the two combined are mosquito heaven so we have many mosquitoes all around - wearing insect repellent becomes almost a routine these days in Mzuzu!  Its also the time of year when things in the garden grow at a tremendous rate - the avocados are ripe and so I have at least one every day.  The guava's are almost ready which is something to look forward to, the rhubarb is growing like crazy, and many flowers are out in the garden giving colour in the dark week that we have had.

In the country generally things are not much better.  Fuel is still in short supply although buying jerry cans at the pumps has been reduced so that when fuel comes at least there is a chance of getting some in the vehicle.  People are struggling with the rising prices, and also rising school fees - even I am struggling with paying school fees as they have all risen up so much.


Then there are the frustrations of trying to do some banking on the phone to NI but having to hold on for 20 minutes and listen to music and someone telling me we appreciate your patience (while I ponder how much this is going to cost), and at the end of the day being told I have to write a letter to them which may take 6 months to get there!!  Talking of letters, I sent letters in May of last year to all of the trainers in the Presbyteries - I was delighted to learn that Chitipa received their letter this past week!  

Enough rambling....its not always easy to remember that God is in control and we have to be patient and things will work out eventually!  

Wishing you all a good week,

Blessings,

Diane