What I came back to

So after almost two weeks out of school to recover from a tonsilectomy I came back to...well let's just call it an interesting day. Here's a little sample-

M wandered back and forth in front of the daycare room door before class started, unsure if she wanted come in and say hi to me like I usually expect.

S, by contrast, came running up to the door and after telling me that he ate peas at grandma's (of course that takes priority!), he proceeds to rattle off about how I got my tonsils out, but that I was gonna be back, that I got my tonsils out, and how the fire alarm goes "eeehh!!!" really loud, that I got my tonsils out, but was gonna come back...and on and on in that vein. Obviously he'd been storing up things to tell me.

N, gave me a big old grin and then went about her day; though later I heard her telling some of the others how she was "Glad teacher Alex was back". So sweet!

And the elementary students made fun of me for sounding funny. Though I did at least get them to say I sounded like a 10 year old boy rather than 7....I think that's an improvement?

Meanwhile J and I had an excellent start to the morning, he easily came in and took care of his things in the coat room. Then he was busy running little errands for me and this kept him pretty happy. Until something glass broke in the classroom and he refused to stay away while I was cleaning up. One of the things that I'm very firm on is that all the children stay away when something breaks in the classroom until I let them know it is safe. So that led to a bit of a meltdown.

Ch and I were happily fetching cards about the Duluth area, while I juggled keeping K on task with cleaning up the pink tower.....until he pointed out the wet spot on the mat...and his pants...and a good chunk of the carpet....ooops. Luckily M was happy to finish doing fetching with Ch while I herded K to the bathroom and cleaned up.

All in all a pretty typical day, it was like I'd never been gone.

And then nap came. J needed a reminder about how I actually did expect him to stay on his cot during nap. L needed a reminder to not crawl on the couch by her bed. K needed a reminder that his blanket was supposed to stay on his cot. And S....well S needed a reminder that he's actually supposed to sleep during nap, but apparently that doesn't work when you don't have a big enough blanket to cuddle up in like normal. Tomorrow I'm going to make sure the usual spare isn't soaking wet in the wash...

Then we finish out the day by waking up a soaking wet J from nap, taking him to the bathroom and spending the next 20 minutes helping get him out of a pair of poopy pants while trying to keep the bathroom semi clean.

Yep. I'm back. And I teach preschool. No way around that. It's good to be back...from some things at least ;)

Things we say

Sitting in the daycare room, peeling the sticker off a child sized hammer. S walks up and watches curiously.

"Are you going to ham with that?"

*Don't crack up, don't crack up, don't crack up*

Two thumbs down

Actually the morning would have been ranked worse if I had more thumbs....

I had one little boy screaming because he'd gotten a cylinder stuck in the cylinder block for 6th time this week and I refused to help him get it out and told him he needed to fix it before doing another work.

Then I had another child who had already maxed out my patience quota with touching things he hadn't been shown yet. Please not that we have had two months of school where this has been the rule and it wasn't even yet 10 o'clock in the morning.

And then there was a third child who for some reason was having some sort of drooling epidemic. Saliva on his sweatshirt neck, saliva soaking his sleeves, saliva on the mystery bag and table...yuck.

And on top of that add the multitude of other children just up to the usual preschool antics of being silly, experimenting and not always paying attention to what they're doing.

So yeah, a double thumbs down day.

So what did I do?

Left the one child crying, sent the other out in the hallway with the aide to practice listening, armed the last one with a tissue and steered him to the sink. Then I got to deal with the regular hazards of the day....by making a book?

Yep. When all else fails I like to just sit down and start working on something. It always draws a crowd and I get something done! So today I sorted newly laminated cards and then put the ones for our new "Vertebrates and Invertebrates" book in order. One special child got to walk to the conference room to fetch the book binding equipment. Then they all watched excitedly as I punch and bound the pages.

Bonus; I then rotated the new book and cards out for our previous biology activity (living and non-living) and set two of the four year olds to work breaking it in....looking back I don't recall how they actually did but at least they were busy for a bit!

So, that didn't exactly solve all the problems, but it did keep everyone busy and let them settle in so the morning went from a double thumbs down to at least neutral.

That's a win, right?

Now I call that a successful lesson

I was trying to find something new to engage M with without presenting a brand new work. So I settled on the land and water forms, thinking she had really enjoyed them last year but hadn't really used them too much this year. The regular presentation involves pouring water in to pre-molded forms that show the basic land and water forms (lake, island, etc.). It's a pretty simple activity and while most children enjoy it, there's not a lot for them to do with it. Pouring the water is fun, and of course we teach the language of the formation, but there's not much to manipulate and explore with.

So as an extension I made some laminated cards showing real life pictures of the different land and water forms. I had M take them out and try matching which form they went with; trickier than it sounds since of course real life doesn't ever quite match the 'ideal' definition. However she did great with it, and almost the entire class was gathered around watching by the time we finished and flipped them over to check the color coding on the back.

And of course someone else wanted to do it the instant she put it back so that right there marks it as a successful presentation in my book.

But then it got better.

At least an hour later I was doing the sandpaper letters with a couple of children and we were doing the 'i' sound (like in 'itch' and 'in'). And from across the room, in the midddle of her work, M pause and pipes up " i for isthmus!"

Now that's success!