Ni Hao...Hola...

Or in other words: Hello! Language week was a success. Yes it's wednesday but I can't live up to 12:17 Jen :) It's about 3:30 and I'm not even sure I have all my thoughts collected for this entry, but here I am. And like I said, my week was a success; at least in my book. I accomplished the things I set out to do with no major outbursts or meltdowns. So overall, a good week for me and all the kids. I appreciate Jen's help on Monday and Kristin's help today. I really would lose my mind if it was just me with 6 kids and a toddler to wrangle on top of it. So thankyou.

Well, the church really seems to be working for me on my turn. Although the room is on the smaller end of things, the 'contained' space seems to contain the energy that sometimes can get out of hand. After reading about how one of Jen's activities ran shorter than she thought, I realized that that had probably happened to me too. So I tried to come up with a lot of activities just incase some ran short. I actually had over 20 songs, books, activities and art projects planned for each day. I know, "WHAT?!" that sounds crazy but I just started to write things down and came up with that many. I focused not only the theme, but a lot on the letters, as well. I didn't relate everything to either one, like we did the felt pizza thing, which was just fun. Having that many things planned was just a back up. I ended up skipping about 3 or 4 things each day. My goal was to plan things in 5 minute incriments. If something ran under by a few minutes or ran over by a few, it all equaled itself out. All and all it worked out well.

I, thoughtfully, made a seating arrangement by taping letters to chairs (same idea as the mats). After near meltdowns on Monday over Little Miss Popular (Julia)... Anyway I worked it out so that everyone was appeased by their seating assaignment and I was satisfied as well. So today I didn't have to deal with the "I want to sit next to..." whine. That made for a much calmer me :)

I really do love Jen's idea of a play break in the middle, but I tried to do without. Only to see if we could make it and we did. Although I did loose track of time today and as that hour and a half ran up, I noticed them all coming unglued. So next time, if I skip play break again, I'll definitely make sure to end a bit before the 11:30 mark as to keep the peace.

The running around in the cultural hall worked amazingly. With 20 balloons and 8 or so balls everyone was entertained and there was no fighting over anything. I loved it. They just ran themsleves silly each day, which is what they need after a lot of sitting. I hope they had fun!

I read the kids a book with mandarin (chinese) words on Monday and Dora and Diego book with Spanish words today. The kids seemed intrigued. I wasn't expecting them to learn a bunch of words in a foreign language. I just think it's beneficial to introduce other cultures and languages to kids even at a young age. Maybe that's just my thinking with my crazy mix raced kids. We sang the welcome song from primary, that goes "Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, we're glad you're here today, Hello" or however the words go. So we sang that but subsituted "Ni hao" for Hello. We counted to 5 today in spanish. We sang a song that I learned from spanish class that goes "Uno, dos, tres Cho. Uno, dos, tres, Co. Uno, dos, tres, La. Uno, dos, tres, Te. Bate (BAH-tay) Bate, Chocolate. Bate, bate chocolate" Anyway it's a fun little song that they pretend to be stirring up chocolate.

I had another enjoyable two days with the kids. I'm always excited to get things together and show them to the kids. It's always a challenge to find activities that will keep their attention but not get out of hand. But that's the fun of it and all of their personalities mixed together is what makes it interesting. Their collective smiles and enthusiasm make me happy. I'm glad this preschool thing is going so well and everyone is adjusting pleasantly. Thanks for reading another long post of mine!