Ouch! He said…. Defiance!

A Kindergartener arrived at school and attempted to apply the spray sunscreen that his mother had sent to school with him. Unfortunately, he sprayed some in his eyes and he was pretty miserable for the next few hours. Not good to send aerosol anything to school with a 5 year old.

The usual “he said, she said” and “he did, she did” was going on around me. I was playing with about 6 of the kids and most of the rest were “driving” trucks around, playing in the tiny kitchen, or building something or other. B and G came to me to intervene in whatever seismic dispute had taken place. I told them to go to the carpeted area behind me and talk it over and figure it out themselves and then they could go back and play. A few moments later I noticed they weren’t there anymore. 🙂

Kindergarteners are such creatures of habit. Everything is done a certain way and deviation either confuses them, slows them down, or brings about total defiance:

“We never go sit on the carpet after we do reading.”
“It can’t be time to go home: we haven’t gone to Centers yet!” (spoken at 3:30 p.m.)
“It’s my job to pass out the papers.”
“We HAVE to do math right after rest time!”

The good news is that it really is great to have an exact routine that they can count on. Each kid knows what is to be done throughout the day, even if he isn’t actually doing it.