DAYS 109 and 110

Gotta love a 5 year old viewpoint. It started to snow on Wednesday and the kids were very excited. One of them exclaimed, “It’s not even Christmas yet!” 🙂

Wednesday was a good day. AMA was doing Kindergarten Roundup, which means that many prospective students and their parents were visiting, and touring the building throughout the day. For us, that meant visitors coming into the room now and then, and lunch being eaten in the classroom since the gym was “busy.” Some of the visitors were surprised to see the kids doing subtraction problems. The principal’s wife was apparently among them and she mentioned to her husband that my room didn’t seem any different than the rest of them – which he passed along to me as a compliment, since I’m a sub. We did some “Earth Day” stuff and I taught them a song.

Thursday was a bit rough. They had Art and then Music and when we corraled them afterwards to do their usual work, they were not really into doing it. I think now that I should have let it be a more laid-back time. After all, they are only five years old, most of them. We did push them to be quiet and busy with their work, though.

In the afternoon, I decided to try something different. I divided them into four groups – letting several extroverted kids choose their teams. I got out the bin full of colored plastic bears (my boys will remember those from elementary school!) and directed each team to prepare a story to tell to the rest of the class. After about ten minutes, I put my denim shirt over a transparent easel to make a sort of puppet place and had each group of 4 kids take turns going behind and have their bears jump around up on top (about the height of their heads) and tell stories. The rest of the kids were the audience. Some of them were quite funny (at least to the other students, who get tickled by most anything silly) – and everyone enjoyed being a part of it. We clapped, they bowed, and rather eagerly listened to the others tell their stories too. One group (led by the aforementioned M. ) had their bears sing the Pizza Hut song. This was considered very hilarious.

I figure that there were a lot of skills that went into that half hour of time, so perhaps we’ll try it again if I’m in there much longer. Tomorrow is a half day and the teacher hopes to return on Monday, so I’ll be in a different class. I really like this bunch (although M. still managed to get on our nerves at the end of the day).

A lot of kids are getting sick – we sent home two with fevers on Wed and one today and some staff members are getting sick too. I hope I avoid it.