Oh My!

Today was one of the worst days that I have had at work in a long time. I had seven boys, and by circle time I was ready to cry. I had to send one boy out of the classroom twice. As a whole, the class didn't listen, but this kid took the cake. Tantrums, crying, stubbornness were just a few of the fun things that I got to experience.

It was like that the entire day, definitely one of those days where I needed some retail therapy afterwards, which I enjoyed, courtesy of some gift cards. Hopefully the rest of the week will not be as crazy as today.

Sock Hop

Yesterday, one of the parents in my class dropped off her child with no shoes. She said that she forgot to put them on. Okay, I thought she'd go home to get them and bring them to the class. Wrong! So I had a child with no shoes in my class.

Since yesterday was a day we have gym, I didn't think it would be an issue. That is, until the fire alarms went off. I got everyone's jackets on (did I mention it was in the low forties and drizzly?) and we all trooped outside and walked to our designated area.

We came inside and guess who had wet, dirty socks? She didn't have any spare clothes, of course, I called up front to see if they could find any. Luckily, someone found some in the dryer and that's what she wore for the rest of the day.

A Comedy of Errors

Today was a horrid day in my class. I was expecting nine kids, six were there, but that was six too many. One of the kids, I knew about thirty seconds after he walked in the door that we were going to have a rough day. Sometimes I'm wrong on that assessment, but today I wasn't.

He was in time out within minutes. For the remainder of the day, he continued to display obnoxious behavior. The kicker came when he got that look in his eye, and sure enough, he'd had a messy accident. While I was getting him corralled into the bathroom to get him cleaned up, a parent came in. My other kids were painting with chocolate pudding and being preschoolers.

She waited for her daughter to finish, which was fine, but I was stuck in the bathroom trying to get this kid cleaned up. In the process of removing his soiled clothes, he managed to get the stool, which is the one the kids step on to reach the sink, completely dirty, and got the toilet seat as well as the floor dirty. One of the kids came in and stepped right in it.

At this point, I just had to laugh. The kids were being noisy, they were wound up all day. Two of the boys butted heads all day, lots of refereeing involved there on my part. It all added up to the mess that today was, and I decided I could either laugh or cry, so I chose to laugh. I'm sure the mom waiting thought I was nuts, but oh well. Par for the course on a day like day. At least tomorrow is Friday!

Project Pictures

Pumpkin Patch!

Corn Cob Painting!

Milk Cap Spider!

Pumpkin Guts!

Thursday I bought a couple of pumpkins, one of which I wanted to take to school on Friday. David cut the top open, and it went to work with me yesterday! The kids were all very excited when they saw the pumpkin sitting on the counter, and were constantly asking when we were going to play with pumpkin insides.

When it was time, I spread out a plastic tarp on one of the tables, then placed the pumpkin in the middle. I gave each kid a paper towel to put their seeds on. I pulled the top off, then stuck a spoon in the hole and gave each kid some seeds. I then told them to have at it! They were welcome to stick their hands in and grab stuff out of there if they so chose.

I got some great pictures of the kids playing with the pumpkin goo. A few of them tried a seed, but only one really liked it. The joy on their faces was contagious, I do believe they would still be playing with pumpkin goo if I hadn't said it was almost time for parents to come.

One kid spilled his paper towel full of stuff on the floor, but since it was on tile, that cleaned up easily. Once the kids were finished playing, I put the pumpkin away and after a quick wipe on the tarp, folded it and put it away. Very little cleanup, which is always nice!

Backwards Day

Today's theme day was Backwards Day. Everyone in my class came to school with their shirt on backwards! In the spirit of things, I even switched my shirt around. We got some weird looks, but oh well, the kids loved it! We also celebrated Backwards Day by walking in the hall, you guessed it, backwards! It was actually really nice, because the kids couldn't speed down the hall like they sometimes want to.

We did some neat projects this week. My favorite was apple painting. I sliced an apple in half, stuck a plastic fork in each half to serve as a handle, then let the kids take turns dipping it in paint and stamping it on the paper. The texture of the apple made really neat patterns on paper! Pictures will follow!

We also glued candy corn to a letter C template. I set them out to dry overnight on Monday and hung them up Tuesday morning. While they looked very nice, it only took a couple of minutes before the candy corn starting falling off. Not just a few, mind you, but about a third of the candy! Oh well, I took them all down and sent them home with the kids.

Another fun project that turned out better than I had expected was something called a bio-poem. I made a sheet with a list of questions to ask each child, then after their interview, they drew a self-portrait. I then glued the paper to a sheet of construction paper that was their favorite color. The final effect was really neat!

Lastly, to celebrate friendship, today we made friendship art. That entailed each child drawing on a piece of paper with another classmate. Sounds easy, right? Well, I tied one of their hands to their classmate's hand, so that one child was drawing with their right hand, one with their left. It looked really interesting! Since we had an uneven number in the class today, I tied my own hand to one of my students' hands, and we worked together. I was the person with the left hand free, that made it interesting. All in all, a good week.

Project Picture!

Here are the donuts that we made a couple of weeks ago to reinforce the concept of circles. We used brown paint on brown paper and I brought in real sprinkles to put on top. We've received lots of compliments!