World mappers

World map class is in full swing, and as you can see from this photo, the kids are making speedy progress!

Dany and Raúl work diligently on their assigned countries

This year's map has been painted much faster than last year's, partially due to the significantly smaller size of the wall, and partially because we were able to use a projector to trace the whole map in a couple hours (instead of spending two weeks copying it from a scaled grid). This is both a joy (less tedious work) and a challenge, since a smaller wall can only occupy a handful of kids at a time. We've taken to splitting each painting group in half, so that some kids paint while some play soccer. Each map class also involves a significant amount of time spent cleaning.

Clean-up party!

Thirty elementary school children + non-washable paint + close painting quarters = inevitable disaster.

To boot, we also have a couple students with learning disabilities. During week one, we quickly learned that Luis (pictured below) could not be allowed near the map wall - painting inside the lines is not exactly his forte, and he has a special tendency to drip paint on his unsuspecting classmates. He also somehow ended up with copious amounts of paint in his own hair, resulting in a twenty-minute thinner scrubbing by myself to avoid a potentially angry parent. So, for week two we assigned Luis the very important job of master brush-cleaner. This was the perfect job for him, until he got thinner in his eye - ouch! But I'm proud to say that three weeks in, we've finally figured it out: put Jessica's sunglasses on him for eye protection and let him clean away!

Luis, master brush-cleaner