Who was it who thought of childcare ratios? Have they ever been in a class of ten young preschoolers by him/herself before? Talk about chaotic. Is it possible to be in the bathroom changing dirty diapers, put nap cots away, and keep the rest of the kids engaged and safe at the same time? Well we made it through snack until someone finally came in to help me out for a few minutes, mostly because I was told to send out a daily update to parents, but relief is relief and I gladly accepted it.
Proud moment: We are in a building with the play yard on a roof, so walking through hallways and taking elevators by myself with ten young children can be a bit nerve-racking when it comes to safety concerns. It can also be a big challenge to get ten kids to line up to leave the play yard at the end of the day. Today we managed to walk all the way to the play yard quietly and together, have so much fun on the play yard, line up when called, and make it all the way back down to the classroom quietly and together again! It was AWESOME! ...Until I was in the bathroom changing someone when I came out to find some Sharks pouring cups of water on each other's heads... Good thing I diffused that before parents started coming in to pick up!
Drama! It's confidential, but major stress all around the center and lots of gossip flying every which way. The joys of estrogen fueled work environments...
Finally: We cut out windows for our camper and put that in dramatic play today. The kids went nuts over it. To save tears and practice turn taking we set our five minute sand timer before each turn. Since I was by myself it was a bit tricky to keep track of who was resetting the timer, but it went pretty well. I think tomorrow we'll make toilet paper campfires and tell stories around it.
Optimistic: Fingers crossed I can finish up the last of my journals before sending them home since I'm off on Friday. I hate journals. I understand their purpose, BUT we have very chatty parents and we are in constant contact with them throughout the day. Most of them chat us up at drop off, sometimes via e-mail or phone call during the day, and again at the end of the day. Many of them want to hear every detail of their preschooler's day and we fill them in as best we can. Thing is that a lot of our parents come right at closing and Ms. H and I just want to go home, so we try to be as polite and brief as possible, but parents don't always take the hint that we're ready to leave because we need to get out of there. We spend 10+ hours working and at closing time we are ready to be off the clock.
Given that I work 10+ hours a day and that I've been doing it for three straight days this week, I'm in need of more than 4 hours of sleep a night. Just one more day and then I can relax for a long weekend and hope that Ms. H has a great start to the week on Monday. (We'll be continuing our camping theme with learning more specifically about forest animals.)
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. -Albert Einstein.
No comments:
Post a Comment