It is June 1 and I know you haven’t heard from me much. With the delay from customs we have been doing a lot of catch up.
We have taught approximately 1500 children and 150 teachers to date. And we have two more schools to go to. We are finding the teachers and students very open and excited. I feel we will have almost all the schools on board and running before we return in October.
We have settled in to more of a routine now that customs is over. Kathy will take the students. The larger schools will give here between 40 and 60 students to work with through the day. If we have long enough they will build the blue windmill. Most if not all of the students have never heard or seen LEGO pieces so it is exciting when they pick it up and see it come together. We met a teacher from England visiting one of the schools while we were there and he got as excited about the kits as the other teachers. When I talked to the teachers later they truly saw that they are getting a huge blessing from LEGO Foundation by helping them get supplies that the rest of the world is just now discovering. The teacher from England is going to be telling his school they need to get these kits!
The timing for this project is perfect. Kenya is poised to explode with creativity and new exploration into science and technology. They are the hardest working people I have ever met. The students do work books all day with no hands on and actually do it! When the teachers saw how the students responded to our teaching they couldn’t wait to try putting some of our project base teaching to work.
The last few days we were in Nakuru but our room did not have internet so we have been out of touch. The first week we went from early morn to sometimes 11 or 12 at night. Once customs was past we made up the lost time by doubling up some of the schools. By the end we will have gone to 6 schools and the other two we missed are waiting for us to come back in October. We have already had about six more schools asking us to come, they all want the LEGOs of course but they still want us to come even if we will just teach them and not leave the kits.