How do you count to five in America?

I spent my first day in the British school yesterday and absolutely loved it. I am at Winton Primary school which is a few blocks away from Kings Cross Station. It is a small school and so they have mixed grade classes. I am in a year 3/4 class which is equal to our 3rd or 4th grade. My teacher, Ms. Collins, is from America but she's been in London for six or seven years so I'm really excited to see how that effects her teaching style.

My day started off with a tour from one of the students in my class. He was incredibly sweet and eager to introduce me to every teacher in the building. All the teachers were really friendly and one even asked me to re-introduce myself to the class so they could guess where I was from and they came up with Australia which made me laugh. After the tour we went back to the classroom just in time for an assembly. The whole school came together to recognize certain classes for having good attendance etc. It was at this point I realized just how small the school really is because all the teachers knew all the students and vice versa which creates a nice community feel.

The first day of practicums always has the potential to be awkward because you never know what the teacher expects of you so I was so happy when my teacher already had groups in mind for me to work with and had other jobs for me to do. She had also planned on giving me some time to talk to the children about America which was the most fun part of the day for me because they asked me a billion funny questions. They wanted to know about my family and when I told them I had a brother they wanted to know all about him. They asked if I knew any movie stars, if I could see the beach from my house. Trying to explain thanksgiving to British children is also a fun experience. My favorite questions came from a girl who was just being silly and really wanted to hear me talk so she asked how we counted to 5 in America and if our toilets were on the floor

Other than that the school day was pretty similar to ours back home. There was a literacy lesson, a math lesson, during lunch we ate in the teacher's lounge, then they had time for silent reading. Oh and then came their science/technology lesson. The class has been doing a unit on the rainforest and had decided to make a digital presentation on preserving the rainforests etc. and are going to send it to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Obama (they also didn't understand why I couldn't give it to Obama, they assumed I had met him). I think this is a really cool project that I can't wait to watch unfold over the next few weeks.

So it was a good first day and I'm really excited to go back. I also have uploaded pictures from Canterbury this past weekend if you're interested in checking them out.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2005672&id=1401300102&l=d1e1e