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Today in after school, we continued working on the salt paint project. One of the child who had finished Wednesday wanted todo another art project. Since I hadn’t really prepared for that I decided to try the toilet paper tube project again. I got all the materials, we did it together, and she was not as excited as she usually is about my projects. I could tell that it wasn’t a keeper. That’s okay, you can’t win ‘em all. 

More prepping today. We got some mammal puzzles out for cultural work. We packed up all of the work for February. Cleaned everything. Started think of art projects and preparing stencils and such. 

I got a little ambitious in after school today. I decided to start some kids’ painting while also getting other kids to glue and salt. It was overwhelming and next time I should try to keep everyone on the same track. 

No after school today but I helped with setting up the new work for March. This month’s theme is mammals. I was tasked with getting out language work and math work. I’ve also been learning about what counts as each section we have. We have language, math, sensorial, and cultural. Math is really anything with numbers on it. I picked out an ice cream counting work, a number puzzle going all the way to 15, and some boards with animals for counting with correlating number pieces. For language, we decided we wanted to get out something a little more challenging for this month, so I picked out some sequence work. These are tiles with a sequence of events on each one. For example, one has a girl with paint and paper, the next one will have her painting on said paper, then the third one will have the girl with a finished painting. 

I just did after-school today. I decided that the toilet paper tube art project was not going to pan out how I wanted it to. I realized that I would have to help them too much and therefore would defeat my whole goal of them doing their own art. I decided on salt painting. I picked out three different silhouettes for them to choose from. A cat, a dinosaur, and a jellyfish. I put glue in little bottles with brushes so that it would be easier for them to distribute the glue without having to squeeze the bottle. The cat was a favorite. The older kids obviously did a better job at painting in the lines. They all definitely excelled at pouring the salt on the wet glue. 

Ways that I see a lack of proper ethical conduct is when we have to fill out an Accident Report. We fill these out whenever a child is hurt or hurts someone else. When informing the parent, we are not supposed to divulge the name of the other child involved and vice versa. This is for safety and privacy reasons. This has apparently not been clearly relayed to one of the staff. I often overhear her telling the parent the name of the other child involved. This has the potential to result in conflict and unnecessary bias between families at our school/daycare.

At mid-day group today I’m starting to realize that the “i” sound is proving difficult for some of the kids. They make more of a grunting sound instead of a proper “i” sound. But in truth, they’re trying and that’s what matters in this age group. (2-3 year olds) I’ve also noticed them struggling with the word “invitation.” In after-school, I decided to redo the base of the tubes. I came up with a better and cooler idea. I used clear paint (so as to not totally redo what they had already done Wednesday) and then we sprinkled glitter on it. They were pretty excited about the glitter so I would say it was a win. 

Mid-day group was standard today. No after-school.

I had mid-day group, I had after-school today. I wasn’t able to fully plan the project I had planned for this week and I’m learning that preparation is key. But, I’m hoping to do a sort of interactive art project when it’s done. I think the kids are really going to love it. It’s a sort of dragon that when they blow into it there will be fire. They started by painting the base today.

I have mid-day group this week again. We’re starting a new sound, “i.” If people think it’s difficult to get the attention of one or two 2-3-year-olds, they should really try sixteen of them. But anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that most of them already knew what the letter “i” looked like.