“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein

Sunday 7 October 2012

A Fun Day in Kindergarten

Well....so much for my last blog post on transitions....I did not expect this, but my daughter ended up having a really tough transition this year. All of her neighbourhood friends were put in one class, and she was put in another class. Her friends are very important to her so it made for a difficult start to the year. She also absolutely loved her teacher last year, so I think that made it even harder to get used to a new teacher this year. My husband's September at work is always crazy busy so he was unable to be around, and I ended up booking the first 2&1/2 weeks of school off so that I could be there to drop her off, pick her up, and generally just spend more time with her. I am grateful that I had that flexibility because it helped her out a lot.

But things always seem to work out, she seems ok now and I have been busy TOCing for the last couple of weeks, and so happy to be back at it! I missed out on some work opportunities, but after being a stay-at-home mom for so many years and not having any other family living nearby, my kids are very close to me, and are used to having a parent around when they need one, and well, they have to come first.

The last couple of weeks have been great, I've so enjoyed being back to work. So far I have been at 5 different schools in the district, and I've taught: Kindergarten, grade 5/6, grade 7, high school, and senior alternate school. At the high school I taught grades 8-12, including a couple of days of Foods, which I always enjoy. Next week so far I will be teaching grade 2, grade 9, and grade 12.

But I had such a funny day in the kindergarten class the other day that I thought I would write about some of the highlights...

The day started with centre time and all of the kids busily playing. Their teacher had warned them that I was coming in so that helped, and I was able to greet them all at the door and chat with them individually as they settled into their playtime. A nice way to start. There were a few tattles about calling each other poopy-heads and that sort of thing, but I can tell the teacher had been working hard with them on resolving conflict, they were great at using their cute little "I messages" and they were so quick to say sorry and move on. Adorable. But the highlight for me was when one of them told me that they had to go to the bathroom but they couldn't because there was a dolphin in the toilet. So I went to look, and sure enough there was a small plastic dolphin toy floating in the toilet. So I had no choice but to grab some paper towel and stick my hand right in there to take it out. Fun stuff! Unfortunately whoever dropped/put the toy in the toilet had forgotten to flush. Ugh. Thank goodness for hand sanitizer.

And then it was time to ring the tidy up bell. Well I had forgotten that tidying up takes a lot longer at the beginning of the year than it does later on, wow! So we went overtime a little. Then their first "job" after a story-time of Dr. Seuss's ABC book (which generated lots of giggles), was to cut out train cars with alphabet letters and glue them on construction paper in order. Well, I could not get around fast enough to help. Some of them had trouble cutting and writing their names on their papers, and most of them had trouble with putting the letters in order. Some of them simply did not want to do it. By the end of that activity, boy was I sweating.

The next activity was outside playtime. There were 17 of them and I just kept counting! They knew if I blew my whistle they were to come over to me, so that was helpful. It was a beautiful day and they burned off lots of energy. They still had a lot leftover though! Lol!

After I got them all back inside and they had a snack we did a Thanksgiving story and a colour by number turkey. And then it was playfirst lunch and eating period. The ladies on duty came in and I got to have a break. Then the principal came in to tell me there would be a fire drill this afternoon during their naptime. Great!

After lunch was show and tell, and then "quiet time" in which they have pillows and blankets that they bring to the gym along with a book of their choosing. Before we went I warned them about the fire drill, told them what to do, not to worry, etc, answered questions like "What is a fire drill?" since this would be their first one! I asked them to use the washroom if they needed to and got them all organized with their things and lined up. Then we walked to the gym and they all ran in screaming and pulled the mats off the wall and placed them around the gym. Now it was time to turn the lights low and get them quieted down for their mandatory rest time.

Amongst the giggles and whispering there were a few more that said had to use the washroom now, a few that took their shoes off, a few that looked like they might actually be asleep! And meanwhile I am looking at the clock waiting for the fire drill to happen, hoping that I will get them all out without any problems.

The fire drill went well, it turned out that everyone was back from the washroom (thank goodness), only one child had not put his shoes back on, only one was standing at the wrong door, and everyone else was walking towards me! Yay! We got out in plenty of time and I even had compliments from two other teachers about how smoothly I got them out. Whew!

We went back to the gym and it took me about 10 minutes to get the kids to gather their pillows, blankets and books, get the mats back up on the walls (no easy task!) and get them lined up to walk back to class. But we did it, and the rest of the day was pretty uneventful with another fun story, some math games, some music and movement (so cute!), and then I gave them a Thanksgiving colouring sheet and got them ready to go home. Overall a really fun and busy day. I was happy to see my couch when I got home that day, and I figured it was the perfect night to use a Groupon for pizza that I had been saving, instead of cooking dinner:)



3 comments:

  1. "There's a dolphin in the toilet."

    That's quite hilarious but no doubt it didn't seem nearly as funny at the time.

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  2. Ha ha, awesome -- love the dolphin story. I've only recently discovered the necessity of those frozen pizzas or pizza coupons -- man, those days when they wear you out at school, then I've gotta come home and get my own to karate, help them with homework, etc. Thank goodness for frozen food.

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