10 Things I Like About My Job

1. Getting a thousand hugs a day
2. The kids get excited about every little thing that you teach them
3. They always want to hold your hands
4. Being complimented about every little thing about me and every little change from day to day
5. When kids dance
6. Feeling loved because they tell you all the time
7. When they are asleep.
8. When they copy how I act and try to put me to sleep
9. When they give you their art work
10. When they tell you their stories

Ice Ice Baby

This week’s theme at the daycare is ice.  We are learning all about how ice is made, what happens to ice in different temperatures, how we use ice, where we see it, and playing many different games with the ice.  To start off our week of ice we coloured ice age pictures in our spare time, and told an ice story.

To incorporate more science into their curriculum I created ice cubes with food colouring in them of the primary colours.  We talked about how the ice was made and what would happen when they melted.  We had a bag of just blue ice, a bag of yellow ice, and a bag of red ice.  Then we made bags with red and blue, red and yellow, and blue and yellow.  The kids didn’t really know what colours would be made when they melted so it worked out even better.  The kids had to think of the best ways to melt the ice, and it was a competition as to who could melt their ice the fastest.  Then they were amazed as they saw what colours the combinations made.  There was two different kids with each combination, and they noticed right away that the same combinations always made the same colour.  We talked about colour and how it mixes. They loved the coloured ice, they wanted to drink it, so they ate the ice cubes.  Then at lunch they wanted them in their drinks so I put it in their cups and they loved drinking the changing coloured water and milk (the milk was weird but they loved it haha).

The other activity we did was we made our own ice cubes. I printed off a cube template and they had to cut on the solid lines and fold the dotted lines.  It was a little more difficult for them, but in the end only one student really had trouble following the directions.  I had to do the glueing of the cube but they did the rest.  We talked about the shape and how it was made all of squares, and they were excited to have their own ice cubes.  I remember making my own cubes in grade nine math, so I was amazed to see four-year olds do the same thing.

How To Train Your Dragon

My kids LOVE the movie How To Train our Dragon.  So, we decided to make a week out of it and do a different activity each day, ending with watching the movie.  Our first day we created our own dragons.  We made sock puppets of our dragons, which worked really well.  I got pom poms, pipe cleaners, eyes, and gems to use to hot glue onto the socks, and the kids had to cut out their own wings to put on.  Since they are four, myself and another teacher did all of the glueing they just picked where everything went.  They worked out really well and the kids really enjoyed flying their dragons around the daycare.

The next thing we made was our shields to help us train the dragons.  I cut out cardboard circles and taped handles on the back.  The kids had to draw and design what they wanted to put on their shield.  After the shields were made they could have a dragon on their one hand and the shield in the other, and they could train the dragons themselves.

The last thing we did to prepare for our dragon training was make viking hats.  I cut bands out of brown paper and fit them to each students head.  Then I cut out black circles and the kids glued them onto the hat.  Then I stapled horns onto the hats, and the kids could wear them.

They were really excited with all three of their outfit items on to watch the movie.  They played pretty rough with them, so they started falling apart after awhile, but the kids still loved them.  It was a really successful week.

Fairy Tale Creations

We read a lot of stories at the daycare, and make up a lot of stories.  I do a lot of breathing exercises with them and tell them stories, that are all basically the same story just change small details about them.  I orally tell them in the story then when I am done they have to recount the whole story to me and tell me the story themselves.  Their listening skills have improved as well as their memory, as they can say every detail of the story now, and they pay attention more when we read normal books.

For a couple of days I was focusing on fairy tales, and we tried to read books and stories they were less familiar with.  We read puss n boots and I had them tell me the story after.  Then they had to decorate their own boots and make their own cats.  They had fun making the cats, even though it wasn’t much of a “craft”.

Our second fairy tale task was that they wanted to make their own fairy tale.  They couldn’t agree on a story line, so we read sleeping beauty and made our own book.  It was a more traditional version of the book, so they had to really pay attention to the differences (than that of the movie).  After we read the book we made a six page book of our own.  They told me what to write on each page, and then each child illustrated a different page.  Then we read the book to a group of younger students and the kids explained their drawings.

Snack Time Science

I happened to give my kids smarties for a snack one day, and we had a lot of fun with them.  We played a game while we ate them, working on our colours, where they had to sort them, and then we drew smarties out of a container and ate them in that order.  The first day we had smarties they really wanted to make them into guitars, but we couldn’t find enough elastic bands to be able to make them.

So we turned them into boats.  The kids made the sales and I taped them together.  They had a lot of fun just playing with them, then I asked if they thought that they would float.  We filled a tub with water and stuck the boats in.  They were amazed they actually were floating!  I told them why they were doing that, and i showed them how to make the sails work and let them go.

The only sad part for them was the boats were too soggy to keep in the end, and they all sunk.  They really wanted to keep them, but unfortunately we had to throw them out.

Daycare Diaries

For my summer i work at a daycare.  It is a completely different experience to any teaching I have really done, and it is my second summer at the same daycare, with the same kids.  My first summer was really fun, but this summer should be much more exciting.  I am more involved in the planning of what I will be teaching and doing with the children, so there are many things that I am planning on doing, and decided I should be sharing what I am doing on my blog.

My summer is made up of two main sections.  Right now I am with a group of 10 four-year olds who are going into kindergarten in the fall.  I am with them for three weeks, two of which I am required to do the planning.  The last part of the summer, which goes for the remaining two months, I am with the school aged kids, so kindergarten to around grade three.  That part of the summer I am planning fully with another lady who works at the daycare.

I am a little behind on my posts for doing this, but I am almost done my time with the four-year olds.  The rest of the summer we are doing an Ancient Egypt theme with the school aged kids.

Working at a daycare has really changed my outlook on teaching.  Working with children that young, something that I didn’t think I could ever really do, has made me realize that I could teach people of any age and feel comfortable doing so.  Being in a daycare is so much different from a school, as the role of parent is so much more evident in the daycare.  Some children are there from 6 in the morning and stay until 6 at night… they put in longer days than I do.  The “classroom” management is different, since the environment is much more different.

I am very lucky to be having this job, and I’m looking forward to sharing them.