I finally start to remember the students by name and practice using their names through the class time. The fact they all are looking very alike and wearing same school uniform does not help. At least I memorized almost all names and now I can "match them" with faces and personalities of the students.

As requested, we made a tree for a bumblebee — the one we made a couole of weeks before. We used shopping paper bags as the main material, cotton swabs and cotton balls as decoration, glue and tape to hold everything together, and some washable paints to color the bits we like.

It was a bit rough after a couple of weeks of break, but I got back on track.

We did a Chinese New Year Dragon out of the egg carton pieces. Some students decided mid-project that they like to do a different thing, like a nest for their tiny toy, and made it mostly without my help.

It went well, partially because this group is very calm and respectful comparing to some other groups, partially because there were less students today than regularly.

Today, we did a Bumblebee out of a piece of egg carton, some black yarn, some paper (for wings) and some pipe cleaners (for the antennae). Students were excited to make their bumblebees unique, color them with markers, give them names and storytelling. Some eatly finishers decided to make other crafts from the leftover materials, like three flowers, a rocket, a paper flower.

It went quite good!

This time, we explored the aluminum foil: how it can take different shapes to create different items.

As a new class in a new school, a little bit nervous before the class but then pretty good. Next time I definitely have to bring extra activities as they became bored some 10-15 min before the end of the class.

Today we did the Flowers out of egg cartons and q-tips. Students got the idea very quickly and were very active, so we did even more than I thought (the whole flower + a leaf).

At the start I was a bit nervous, because it is the first class with this group, but we got quite comfortable and in the mood of learning pretty fast.

Today, we cooked Old-Fashioned Pancakes, from scratch. Students were quite excited measuring, mixing, flipping the pancakes and actually eating them.

Absolutely awesome. Lots of students already know me and they were having the greatest last day of school in this semester — some drawing, other just vibing.

It went great — the school had a Winter Concert tonight, so we were supervising the students before the show and a little bit during the show.

It was noisy as one of the previous classes, but we managed to go through it. Most kids felt quite comfortable in tasting different combinations of cheese-and-fruit or cheese-and-vegetable, and in creating something out of their imagination.

We did the Christmas salad out of something green (arugula leaves), something red (bell peppers, tomatoes and radishes) and something white (cream cheese and apple slices). Students decided that they want to do not only the Wreath pattern (circular one on the plate), but the Reindeer too, so we had a number of Reindeers at the end as well.

It was quite relaxing but a bit sad that it is the last class in the series

Today we finished quite ok. The oldest student in this group (2nd grader) continues and finished, with some help, the basic shape of amigurumi (3d crocheted stuffy). The other students were engaged in creating a simplier yarn-and-cardboard-ring craft, "a flower", that involves measuring a piece of yarn, cutting it, folding, tying to the ring, counting and additional tying in a pattern. One student (the youngest) was mostly interested in cutting the provided yarn into smaller pieces and using scissors in both hands, so I asked her frequently to help me in cutting the string and she looked quite satisfied with that task.

For me it was a bit loud but okay. I love that kids were engaged and grouped themselves in teams according to their preferences and abilities; we ended up with one team of "older" children who did everything by themselves with just a bit of my guidance and a group of younger children whom I supervised closely and encouraged not to eat the whole batch of butter-and-sugar before it is done as cookies 🫣

We made some shortbread cookies — kids mostly worked on measuring and mixing, and the cleanup after we were done