I guess when we ask the teachers at the school and they say “yes they use the paddles” we are delighted to hear it but are not always certain if they are being polite or trying to keep us happy.

At the beginning of January I went over to Mekele and took our volunteer teacher, Lynn around the school on her first day there. The teachers were not expecting the tour and we went into a few classrooms at random. Imagine my delight to see the paddles in action in a genuine, unrehearsed lesson!

The students were learning Amharic. This is not an easy language as instead of having an alphabet like us, they have symbols which represent sound combinations and they have to learn about 130 in all.
This class was learning the symbols for ha hi he ho hu h etc . The children were holding up the symbols representing these sounds and then one would hide their symbol and then the other children would have to say which one was missing.
Also the teacher was moving the children into different places in the line so that they could spell out some short words!

This was really excellent. The children were enjoying their classes and all participating well and showing learning is fun!

We were reluctant to ask you for more paddles until we were convinced that they were being used properly, but they certainly are!

Therefore we would like to accept you very kind offer to send us some more paddles.

My husband is trying to find out if someone from his company is re-locating from the US to Europe (this is how we brought the paddles and markers over to Europe last time!) and then we will give you a US delivery address.

Many thanks indeed for all your support

Best wishes