Passing off the workload

By the end of the day, I'm tired, I'll admit it. By the time those last few children are woken up from name and wander in, all bleary eyed and still half-asleep, I'm pretty much out of ideas and energy. Luckily by the end of the year, there's a great solution to this problem-

Have the children do the work instead.

We teachers choose one older child to read and let them go. By this point the children all know the routine and even know how to quietly make the circle bigger as new children trickle in. The older ones who can read aren't afraid to ask the younger ones to be quiet so everyone can actually hear the book.

But the best part is they take it all the way through to dismissal. In fact they love to be the one in charge of deciding who gets to go to which sink to wash their hands for snack. Today our reader graciously chose a younger child, A, to do the dismissals, since they don't normally get a chance to do it.

I don't think I've ever heard a 3 year old take any task so seriously. He stood up, surveyed the circle and began pointing and calling up each child by name. And of course he had to assign them a sink to go to. He would say to them either "Lunch sink" for the one in the lunchroom, or "Us sink" for the one in the classroom. A few of the children corrected him, "You mean, our sink?" but he was so involved in his task that I'm not sure he even heard them. The thoughtful concentration on his face was priceless and he judged who was ready to go next.

And what did his classmates do?

Why, they sat quietly and waited for him to tell them where to go. I want to see a regular preschool pull that off!