The end of our school year and the beginning of our small vacation school
Just a few weeks ago we finished our school year, which begins in January and ends in October. During these months, we were working with every one of our kids! We are thrilled and excited for the accomplishments of every one of our kids, and for the hard work and dedication of each of our facilitators.
In October we had many activities, and we had closing events in all of our classrooms, in which the kids sing, dance, and express what they’ve learned during the year. It’s marvelous to see how social and lovely they are.
We finished with a total of 35 classrooms, and 435 kids!
We also held our third training in October for our facilitators. In this training we focused on instructions for each of our facilitators on how to develop the small vacation schools that begin November 8th and end December 17th, 2021. The objective of this is for our kids to be able to continue their educations, so that they’ll be able to enter public school the following year with positive growth and advancement. The classes generally finish in October and begin again at the end of January or beginning of February, but we see that all this time without educational activities affects their progress and development because it’s so much unstructured time. For this reason, we created our small vacation school, and it will be a big support for all of our students. In the coming days we will be providing updates on how our students are doing in the small vacation schools!
Thank you so much for being with us!
With gratitude,
Aula Magica Guatemala
Links:
Hello everyone,
Thanks for always being eager to hear about news from our program - this makes us feel even more committed to what we do at Magical Classsroom.
The current situation is certainly very changeable and unpredictable but Magical Classroom is committed to do everything possible with respect to providing education for our children. We do this whilst respecting the health of our valued colleagues. There are difficulties in all of our communities and unfortunately the virus has been present in all of our communities, but we’ve always striven to find a way to continue working.
All of our classrooms have been working differently depending on the communities’ circumstances. We listen to the opinions of the families, who alongside the local authorities always show us considerable support.
Some of our facilitators visit the children in their homes and others work in small groups. In certain occasions we’ve had to stop classes due to the number of Covid cases present in particular communities. This prioritises the health and well-being of our students and facilitators.
Certain facilitators and community coordinators have received a Covid vaccination and others will soon receive theirs which will hopefully allow us to continue our work.
Each week we carry out planning sessions for each facilitator and this is done in conjunction with her head trainer, Lucy, facilitators and community coordinators. During recent months we’ve completed two training sessions for all of our facilitators. We have achieved this by working in small groups and going from one community to the next. We have another training session planned for the end of September or beginning of October.
Each of our facilitators have illustrated themselves to be very responsible and dedicated to our program. We are extremely appreciative of each one of them and we have worked with each one despite these challenging times.
We really do appreciate everyone’s support.
With sincere appreciation and love,
Aula Mágica Guatemala
Hello Friends,
We share with you this wonderful project that we carried out with our children in the months of June and July of this year 2021! each of our children planted a tree. We thank everyone who was part of this project!
Importance of Trees for the Environment and Humanity:
We know that trees produce oxygen, purify the air, form fertile soils, prevent erosion, keep rivers clean, capture water for aquifers, serve as refuges for fauna, reduce soil temperature, promote the establishment of other species, and regenerate soil nutrients and many more benefits ...
Aula Mágica Guatemala is helping contribute to our environment!!!
We invite you to watch these videos of this activity, they are in Spanish and English:
Links:
Our educational methodology
Magical Classroom uses the Active Learning Methodology which consists of a combination of methods, techniques and strategies that put the child at the centre of learning, thus giving them more freedom, control over their education and for them to be more participative.
The Active Learning Methology looks to create an education that offers children an enjoyable working environment that is innovative, participative, dynamic, fun and active. This is through the implementation of different methods inside and outside of the classroom, which are adapted to the subjects taught, as well as adapted to the child’s age and their rhythm of learning. The methods that we use are:
Montessori: the child has the opportunity to explore freely and discover through their curiosity and their own experiences with different teaching activities including numbers and letters.
Waldorf: we promote the artistic and creative skills, contact with nature and good values.
Thought-based learning: we develop the critical-thinking of the child.
Project methods: This is carried out through spaces known as learning corners, such as reading corners, block corners, art corner, numbers and letters corner, and music corner. In these corners, different activities are carried out and children can experiment with different recycled and natural materials.
Alphabetical & phonetical method: we use the alphabet so that children learn vowels, consonants, with their relatedsounds, imagery and movement.
Newark Method or Story method: A story is read in each class, taking advantage of the curiosity and imagination of the child, awakening a love of reading in which they use rhymes, games, tongue-twisters, plays and reading comprehension.
Little Star method: Children learn sounds and to trace the letters.
The Base National Curriculum & Creative Curriculum: both curricula are combined so that the facilitators have teaching tools, offering the necessary content to encourage and support the students, helping them achieve success, to be creative thinkers, and offering practical opportunities to explore and discover new things.
Amongst the strategies which they’ve involved in the program are: small experiments, magic words, learning through games, educational audio activities, using technology, and developing fine and gross moor skills.
The benefits of the Active Methodology for children at Magical Classroom are: a greater motivation for the learning of new knowledge, the acquisition of new cognitive, social, emotional abilities, greater curiosity and imagination, motor skills, language skills, and benefits to the development of autonomy. Through this, we help the children to be successful, thoughtful, creative and confident children.
The method is implemented and adapted to the social context and the culture of each communities in the different departments where we are currently working.
Our facilitators become people who can guide the learning of our children, basing the learning in concrete experiences to achieve learning that is appropriate and effective.
Our best wishes to all of you and see you soon!
Aula Mágica Guatemala
Dear friends,
How have you been?
From the beginning of this marvelous program in 2014, our main goal has always been to provide communities in need with preschool education.
We now have a presence in 35 communities, extending to rural and far away regions. But we know that there are many communities still waiting for us, with kids waiting to receive education. We know they exist and we understand their needs.
We are passionate about continuing to expand, as in the last publication we had 32 classrooms, and now we have 35 Magical Classrooms!
And still, we wish to open many more– we know that the need is significant, and we are ready and excited to work with communities in need.
We invite you to watch this video and share with friends and associates who may be interested in our work. We are so grateful for your time and support.
Our best wishes to you all!
Aula Mágica Guatemala
Links:
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