A Day at the Zoo

It is Friday afternoon, and I am very glad the weekend is here! I have had a screamer in my class this week, especially today. He hit another kid, and then managed to get his shoe off while having his tantrum. He then proceeded to throw his shoe around until I was able to get to him. I wound up with a bruise on my ankle (a small one) for my efforts in trying to get the shoe.

I kept the shoe until he was able to calm down enough for us to talk about not hitting our friends. I also talked with his mom about it, so she's aware of the problem. For the kid who got hit, I had written an incident report. He didn't get hit that hard, and there was no mark. His mom was very nice and understanding, and she didn't blame me for what happened. I realize that sometimes boys play a little rough, but there is no excuse for hitting, and I make that quite clear to the kids.

Since we had several of the staff out today, I had been asked by the director if I could stay past my normal time to leave to help give people their lunch breaks. I got to spend time in three different classrooms, plus mine. During the first class, I watched the class during nap time. Unfortunately, one kid woke up, saw I wasn't her teacher and proceeded to be loud and wake up the other kids. Two kids decided they needed to use the restroom and took forever! When I saw that one kid was playing instead of using the restroom, I sent him back to his cot. I finally got the kids to calm down by telling them how sad their teacher was going to be, and pretending to write notes to their parents. (Never mind that I had no idea what their names were.) They were very sad when their teacher came back and I told her how they had acted and gave her the "parent notes" that I had written.

On to the next class. I relieved the teacher while she went on a quick break. This class was also having naptime, but they never moved. When the teacher got back, she and I had a nice chat, comparing stories from the front lines! My last class was to assist in the infant room. I was only in there for about twenty minutes. I fed a couple of babies and entertained a couple more. I'm definitely glad that was the last room I went to, then I left on a positive note instead of frazzled!