Wednesday 22 September 2010

not for the squeamish

Kitty back at school today after a good nights sleep. Praise the Lord!

Here are some pictures of one of last week's school activities. They are learning all about their bodies this term - blood systems, bones, teeth etc. Today was healthy eating, with traditional cutting out of magazine pictures of foods and constructing a food pyramid on the classroom wall. But last tuesday they got to investigate the insides of a chicken!

Tuesday is the one day when the Tanzanian teacher, P, a lovely lady, runs the class together with another lady who comes to teach swahilli, and the English teacher, J, has a day off. When I arrived, J (who lives on site) called me into her house rather worriedly. P had that morning bought  a (live) chicken from the market, killed it, popped it in J's fridge and was planning to open it up and remove it's major organs in the classroom for the children to watch, examine and handle.

J, extremely squeamish and very English, wasn't at all sure how this would go down and explained that this wouldn't normally form a part of classroom activities for your average P1/2 combined class in the UK.... P was then herself horrified that she might have planned an activity considered 'innapropriate'. Given that the majority of 6 year old Tanzanian girls would be expected to be able to go out to the yard, choose and kill a chicken for supper, it hadn't occurred to her that this would be at all unusual. So I was called in to express my opinion as a parent and give the yay or nay. Well, you can see my choice...




Kitty says she liked seeing the bits but didn't want to touch them. She never did like getting her fingers sticky. It looks like not many of the others had the same inhibitions.

3 comments:

  1. Excellent! Did they then cook it for dinner?

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  2. Great choice Mrs B -now wash your hands.

    Hope all is well with you. Tell Mr B that Adam returns from his exile in Greenland next week :)

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  3. Great Choice! Even the squeamish coped here!

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