A day in the life of an ITF

Today was a fairly normal day at school.  The kids got taught plural essentials:

They acted a little crazy:

A teacher brought in a tiny turtle.  It sat on the table in the staff room for about 10 minutes and then moved a little bit.  I was a whole other level of confused because what kind of teacher just whips out a tiny turtle during the break?! I mean, she was just carrying it around in a shoe box.  I actually asked whether it was real and one of the teachers could not get over the fact that I asked that.  But seriously, a tiny turtle... whaaaaaaaat:

To end my day, I played the most amazing matching game with my kids that went like this: 

My two favourite things in the world are food and travelling (am I right?!) so what's better than a game that combines those two things? Nothing. So I came up with a matching game where my kids had to match countries and their national food.  

My aim was twofold - have a bit of a crafternoon and teach the kids something about other countries of the world.  I find time and time again that the kids here tend to be a little bit isolated in the sense of Israel being the only country in the world.  So, that I did and a massive success it was.  

The advanced grade 6s that I played it with loved it and I think they learnt a lot about other countries.  I was very impressed by how many they got right although there were a few stumbling blocks including South Africa and New Zealand.  I was trying to explain how New Zealand is next door to Australia and the responses I got included "So, it is Australia?" (I was so tempted to say yes) and when I explained that New Zealanders basically sound like Australians one girl said "so they are Australians", and again I so wanted to say yes but I didn't. 

I even spent part of the lesson trying to teach them how to use chopsticks with two pens with limited success.  I really want to get a world map for future lessons so I can properly point out all the countries.  My amateur drawings of Asia put my art skills to shame.  I am also thinking of maybe doing a country a week focusing on the ones I have travelled to first to show off all my photos haha ... ahhhh! feeling so inspired!

We are off to Jerusalem tomorrow for a small weekend getaway with ITF and I am pretty excited. 

MM x