Investing in the neighborhood school

We send our children to Turkish schools here in our neighborhood. My oldest is in 1st grade and my middle girly is in preschool.  This choice was not an easy one but we are confident of the choice we have made and it was in no way made out of ignorance.

Here is the project we did together in class.
Lots more pics as you scroll down. ;)

Truth is many would say the Turkish school system is not working properly ...without getting into all that I would say that this journey of our kids education overseas has probably been one of the harder issues we have faced as a family living overseas.  In it all we have done something that was somewhat unexpected, we have united with our neighbors we have felt the struggle and the real concerns for their children, we have been learners and are walking along side them as we too struggle through helping our kids get the best education. We do not feel that our children are getting a poor education, yes we have to be involved a lot with our 1st grader but our kids are succeeding, bilingual and doing well and we are so grateful for that. 

A little twist to it all, is we not only send our children to the public Turkish schools, but I also homeschool my kids in English and eventually a few other subjects along the way. Still trying to juggle that. :)
While we are here we take one year at a time regarding our kids education. We want to be sensitive to our kids educational progress as well as emotional and spiritual needs, so one year at a time we press on. 

Meanwhile to get my foot in the door and to promote Turkish creativitiy I asked my oldest daughter's teacher if I could come in and do a craft with the kids. I was readily given permission and now myself and two or three other moms go in every other Wednesday for the last hour of the day and do an educational craft.  The moms and children are both very excited and the response has been inspiring. 

I love that I am closer to my daughter, her friends and her atmoshpere at school. My daughter is very much a visual learner and I am so glad to be able to give a little bit of that to her in her public school setting.  An added bonus of course is that I am giving into my community.
Here are a few pics of the craft we did 2 weeks ago.
The next one is this week and I am goimg to share about Pointallism a bit and show pictures of different art forms and then do the q-tip art from this post.

It started out with TP rolls. I mean really doesn't every good craft need a TP roll.
Can you imagine I had enough rolls for everyone in the class..
I am a compulsive tp hoarder.
(a moment of confession)

Here is Autty helping get things ready.

Here I am giving it my best in Turkish to explain nocturnal and some of the different animals that are nocturnal.
I taught the names of the animals in English and Turkish.

I had a captive audience for the first 6 or 7 minutes.

Here are some of the students holding up their owls.

Here is the owl in it's natural habitat.

Unfortunatley Autumn was sick and couldn't come. ;(
I was sad that she was unable to be there.
However she will be there this week and I am sure 'help' me out with my Turkish. ;)

  I have been praying almost daily that I could find a way to use my creativity to invest in others and

 this has been a pure delight and one way to do that.  All the children call me Rebecca Teyze (which is Aunt Rebecca) and I love hearing it so many times.

 Click here to see this same project we did at home a few months ago.

~becky

Investing in the Turkish Neighbourhood School  Series #2  #3  #4
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