Today was hot. That pretty much sums up the morning. I started reading The Magic Treehouse with a group of sixth graders, which was exciting, but I ended the school day sweating and exhausted as we walked back to the house from school. Afterwards, we went back to do our community project: making bricks. (I call it making bricks but according to Kwesi it is really building a house.)

The brick-making process involves a lot of what seems like moving a huge pile of dirt. Then moving it again. Then spreading the pile out. Then piling it back up again and moving it a few more feet to the left. Somewhere in between these moves we add a bag of cement and a few buckets of water to make a mixture of wet dirt/cement. This gets packed into a mold, put on the ground in a row and left to dry. It’s hard to see much difference, such as walls and a roof rising off the ground, but seeing thirty blocks in neat rows on the ground sure does give me a sense of accomplishment. This is how the new classroom building was started, and that won’t be falling down anytime soon.

Until next time,

Laura