Today I attended class as a volunteer. That means I take on about six kids for an hour during the morning while they have a learning time. Monday is my day to go in and although I missed last week (Levi was sick), I appreciate the opportunity to be involved and get to know the other kids.
Ellie gets to go along since she is old enough to either play alone or participate. When we got there they were out to recess, so Ellie explored the play area. The box castle was a new addition.
The kids got back within minutes of our arrival. They line up at the door and then come in single file, taking turns at the water fountain before finding their spot on the rug. Then Ms Houchin reads them a story from a book that has the same theme as the rest of their projects for the week, before breaking into groups for individual projects, or "jobs." When the book is small she will project it onto a screen so all the kids can see it well. Ellie went and sat next to Levi today and put her arm around him, it was just so cute. I wish I had taken a photo of it.
Levi was in the Yellow group and I recognized most of the kids in his group. Armando, Bianca, Valerie and Yvette. One boy, Kyler, was absent today. Since it was a four-day week (no school Friday) there was an extra kid in the group that wasn't there last time, Dominique. Usually there are five groups of children and five stations for a five-day week.
Ms Houchin plans out different activities for each station and then as the week goes by the groups of kids are rotated through each of the stations. This week the theme is castles, so the book was about castles. Colors and shapes are used throughout the stations in different capacities.
Our first activity was BINGO with colors and shapes. I passed out the boards to each child, and this time Ellie wanted to participate also. Each child was given eight red circles, which Valerie told me were called "tokens." Then I held up a card and said what the color and shape was. If the child had that on their bingo card they could use a token to mark it and when they got them all they could say BINGO. Ellie actually got a lucky card and was the first one out. We kept going until all the kids had their Bingo. I should have asked if they wanted to play again because that didn't last very long. I will know better for next time to try and maximize the activity.
The second activity was a shape necklace. There were precut shapes in all colors and the kids could choose one of each shape for their necklace. Then they got to use a hole punch on the shape to make the hole for the yarn for their necklace. This didn't take very long either, even though we all had to share the hole punches since there were only three.
For the third activity there was a coloring exercise in which the kids had to color in their picture using a guide on the table. Red = circle, yellow = rectangle, green = square and blue = triangle. They had enough time to do two pictures, some of the faster ones even did three.
After that it was time to wash their hands and get in line for lunch. The kids with a packed lunch retrieved it from their cubby and the ones who ate from the cafeteria got their name tag from the box with their lunch account number on it.
It was a fun morning and seemed to go pretty well. There were two other adults helping out this morning in addition to myself and Ms. Houchin.
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