Milestones

We had a major milestone in our classroom today- our first visitor!

Our school had a photographer come in to take some pictures for the school website. I had prepared the children the day before a little bit. At our morning meeting I first told them we were going to have a visitor, then before getting ready to go home I had them practice introducing themselves.

Well none of them did introduce themselves, or ask her name (at least that I heard) but they definitely were pretty excited to see her. It was almost like I had done a magic trick. I said that someone would be visiting, and oh my gosh! They did!

Actually M was a bit nervous. She actually began to set her work up at a table and then when the photographer came closer to take a picture of someone else I noticed M kind of circling, watching. I asked if she was a bit nervous and she said yeah so I offered to sit by her while the photographer was there. That was all it took to send her back to her work (she was doing the orange squeezing and really didn't want to stop!).

The photographer was in and out all morning and I did tell M that she could say she didn't want her picture taken if she was too nervous. She actually worked up the courage to say so, though she was still a bit nervous and moreso shouted it across the room when the photographer came back in. But hey, she said what she needed to say.

Other than having one nervous child they all did very well with having a stranger in the room, which is great because we should actually have a lot of visitors to our room and I want them to become so used to this and comfortable in the room that they can keep working as though no one is watching. Not that it'll happen when their parents come to observe I'm sure but I can hope!