Easy as pie! Or pancakes!

After our first day of official class time, I think we were all happy that it went so smoothly. The girls seemed to know more English than they thought they did, which boosted both their confidence and motivation. I am excited about our blog for many reasons. First, we will be able to look back and see how far we've come. It is a difficult (but incredibly useful) skill to sit down and force yourself to just write. Consistent use of a blog makes developing of this skill way more fun---as we can all write about things that interest us individually. Through this resource, we are hitting all the areas of the English language. We are working on vocabulary and sentence structure when initially drafting the posts. In addition, we are constantly discussing the content of our posts in English as we write. Thus, we are practicing conversational speech. Lastly, grammar and new vocabulary is improved as I help them edit and enhance each of their posts. We look for errors and ways to make our sentences sound more sophisticated. Of course, the first step is just getting the message across but the eventual goal is to speak in full sentences with little mistakes. This takes time but by being strict on the girls now, I think this will improve dramatically by the end of our classes.

Yesterday, we made healthy pancakes! I was especially excited because they surprisingly tasted like normal pancakes! I am excited to make these next year at school. They were so easy to make and the equivalent of just eating an egg and a banana for breakfast. I would choose pancakes over an egg and a banana any day! We all cooked lunch together prior to our pancake extravaganza (which luckily decreased our pancake consumption). Then, we all watched the first episode of Gilmore Girls (our new favorite English series ;)) together. Alice is now caught up and I'm excited to see what happens in episode 3! Finally, although they might think that American girls are really scary now, we watched the all-time classic, Mean Girls. I have seen it more than 50 times probably, but I still enjoyed it just as much as I did the first time! It may not have much intellectual value but it makes everyone laugh. Laughter is valuable!

-Leah