Home of Hope Kindergarten

oowf — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:52:22 +0000

Today is August 20th and it is the first day of the Home of Hope Kindergarten.

Above and seated, left to right are Ruthie, Rose, Isaac, Gracie, Autumn and Mosie. Behind them are the teachers, Cui Xiao Jie, Michelle Godard and Zhao Cai Xia. Michelle will teach the children English and the two certified Chinese teachers will teach the children all the other subjects.

For a very long time we have wanted to have a school associated with the Home of Hope. Several years ago we attempted to open an English school but due to licensing requirements we had to take on a Chinese partner to satisfy the government regulations and it just didn’t work out.

Now we have the Home of Hope Kindergarten. It is small. For now it is just for our own children. This year we will have seven full time students and four part time students. We use the term “part time” because the part time students are still very young so they only join in for the singing, dancing and exercise classes.

The full time students are:

Issac Ma Shi Hao left and Autumn Xiong Duo right

Ruthie Xiong Shan left and Moses Xiong En (Mosie) right

Gracie Xiong Ya left and Jackson Godard right

Rose Xiong Ai left and Caleb Xiong Qiang (part time) right

Abby Joy Xiong Miao Yin (part time) left and Eli Godard (part time) right

Mary Xiong Xiao (part time)

Just a couple of days ago our kindergarten furniture was delivered. New “little ones” sized chairs, tables, book cases, file racks and miscellaneous items for the day to day activities of the kindergarten. The older boys of the Home of Hope helped to assemble the furniture.
There is a fresh excitement in the air as the older children realize that all of these babies were abandoned and taken in when they were new born and now they are starting kindergarten in our own Home of Hope Kindergarten. So Cool!

Additional snapshots of the new Home of Hope Kindergarten. A lot of interesting things happened today.. the first day… and there will be many more! We will update this page as often as we can! Wont you come visit us sometime? That would be very, very nice!
So come on over!

The following is a short clip of our American teacher, Michelle Goddard teaching the children their English ‘A-B-Cs’. English is taught in all Chinese schools and is mandatory at this time throughout the country. Just by way of explanation, she is teaching the children to use their heads to ‘air draw’ the letters. The kids love it and approach it like a big game… at the same time they are learning! [See post to watch Flash video]Just click on the little white arrow in the center of the screen above and the film will start. You do have to have Flash Player installed on your system to be able to play the video.