Flexibility and a Sense of Humor

My pre-teaching class began their lessons teaching Pre-K students letter recognition and how to print their names. We were all set up, four centers for 11 kids.

At the long table was Dylan and his clay ready to help the kids form the clay into the letters of their names. At the other end of the long table was K'monica with cans of shaving cream to spray on the table. The kids could write their names in the foam and clean their hands at the same time. After writing in shaving cream, the students move to the floor where Lacey had letter flashcards laid out. The mission was to pick up a capital letter and find its corresponding lower case letter. Last but not least was Mark, set up in the library office. His lesson was sorting plastic letters by color and shape. Yes, letters are shapes.

I made lists for each station telling which kids would be there at what time. We would rotate every ten minutes. Kids' names were taped to the long table in their groups. Then we waited for the kids to get there.

Lisa, the pre-K assistant, was supposed to bring the pre-K kids to the library before my pre-teaching kids got there. After the pre-teaching students arrived and we'd waited for a few minutes, I sent two girls to go get the pre-Kers. The girls came back empty handed but with news that the pre-K class went into the special ed classroom, it looked like maybe they were going to get their eyes checked. Really?

It was unclear if they would come or not. I wondered why we weren't told there was a change in plans. Here's where flexibility comes in handy. We'll wait and hope for the best. It wasn't long till Lisa came in with three kids. Of course they were all from different groups. An impromptu new group was created for them and they started the clay activity. Then one more kid came in...sent him to Mark followed by the next two kids when they arrived. It kept going that way until we had all 11 pre-K kids in the library, plus one. Yeah, we got a new kid today. Eventually, all the pre-K students got to spend some time at each center and everyone had a good time.

The pre-k students were escorted back to their classroom and cleanup began. Did I mention a sense of humor? Instead of cleaning up, Mark got the shaving cream and transformed himself into Santa Claus. I'm quite sure these high school stuents had more fun playing with the shaving cream than the four-year-olds did.

.