Onward to the New Year!

The children came back today for their first day of 2015 and it went so well! It was a great morning with a lot of self-directed work. Several children helped me put away the small mountain of laundry we had washed before break, while the rest quickly settled back in to some of their favorite work activities.

C tagged along with me for a little bit before asking, "Eggs, teacher Alex." Lucky him he got the very last hardboilded egg and proceeded to spend the next half-hour peeling and cutting it, happily engaged in getting himself a snack.

W went through is usual repertoire of washing the windows, sweeping off the tables, trying to sweep the carpet, watering the plants; all the usual classroom maintenance stuff that he likes to do. Then it was back to the tried and true globes. I'm really hoping to get the world puzzle map soon so I can introduce it to him since he seems so interested in the globe. Then I'll be able to judge whether he actually likes the globe itself, or is just taking it out because it's easy ;)

Our lovely new flower arranging stand
(thanks dad!)

C and S did fetching with the new solar system cards, I helped them out with learning the names and spawned interest in some other children to learn some new vocabulary as well.

Meanwhile M went from work to work to work, I couldn't even keep track of what she was doing other than to note that whatever she took out she put back properly and seemed to be concentrating on while she had it out. My friends, those are the types of children you dream about having in your classroom. I need to remember to mention how great she is at keeping engaged during the next parent teacher conference.

At the end of the day they were all tickled silly by the amount of beads we had to put on our string to catch up for all the days we had been gone. That was it, the end of our day. It was like they'd never left...please tell me that tomorrow's going to go off just as well...please?

We're workin'!

Wow! Only one month in to school and already I had trouble giving presentation because the children where too busy working and I didn't want to interrupt them. That's wonderful!

Ok, ok, so it wasn't all day and it wasn't always everyone, but as the general flow for the day I think I can confidently say that they were all pretty busy. There were a few times when I was busy helping one child or another and someone else would be wandering or need my assistance in some way, but by the time I could get to them they always seemed to have either fixed the problem or chosen a work to do. It was great!

The two C's at the cloth washing stand

C repeated the cloth washing activity I had shown her pretty much perfectly. If you know anything about small children you should have realized by now that sometimes they're spot on with their imitation, but not always. I was so proud of her for remembering all the steps...well and of course for using the lovely stand my parents had built for the classroom.

S meanwhile was actually practicing things, a big accomplishment for her as she normally just observers others and waits for me to give her a new presentation. It seems like the funnel pouring work was entertaining enough to hold her attention.

O and W, my two usual rambunctious ones, were their usual bouncy selves, but both found some things to engage in with for some longer periods. O was very interested in the new clay I put out, one with a more natural color and stiffer consistency than what was on the shelf originally. I think it will be great for all the children to use it, since they need to use more of their hand muscles to manipulate it.

C working with the scissors

The other C in our classroom was also pretty busy today, I still needed to watch and make sure he stuck only to materials had been shown, but luckily when he does take out a work he stays very engaged with it; especially the snipping work with the scissors. He really likes the little origami envelopes to tuck the pieces in once they are cut.

M, is my student who can be so quiet that I'm not always sure what shes' up to. Today I watched her do the pasting over and over until she had three pages covered in little shapes. I think the main reason she stopped was she ran out of good shapes! She put the work away when she was done, but I noticed the table was a bit sticky still and asked her to wipe it up. She absolutely jumped on that task and in less than a minute the table was sparkling! Not too bad for a girl who usually likes to say "I don't want to."

I saw this possibility in the beginning of the year, and I'm really glad we'er getting to that point where they have enough things that interest them to keep busy all morning. Of course I have to be careful not to distract them. Which means I can't read books, sing songs, or play sound games with anyone else. S asked near the end of work time if I would do a sound game with her. I said yes and she barely had time to get the basket of objects before C was rolling out a mat for us to work at, while the other C and M were cleaning up their work as quickly as possible. W wanted to join us right away, and did an ultra fast clean-up when I reminded him about all the split peas he had spilt on to the floor.

Oh well, I guess I can't complain since they did actually clean everything up before coming to join us!

Working, working, everyone is working.