Frenetic. That is the best word to describe the energy in a 3 year-old classroom. The kids were really excited about my guitar. One of my students thought it was a piano. We didn’t spend too much time with it because we need to build up to having more than a two minute attention span. To feel how long two minutes is when you are teaching 3 year-olds click start on the video below and finish reading this post.
The best part of the day was center time. The kids made plans to play in different parts of the room. We used a bulldozer to pick up counting bears. I had one long disjointed conversation on the phone with Rashia. We couldn’t really get past the, “Heay! What you doing? I’ll call you back.” stage of the conversation but it was a start. A boy and a girl put on plastic tool belts and filled them with plastic tools. We banged on stuff with plastic hammers. We banged on a lot of stuff with plastic hammers and we pretended to use power drills. In case you didn’t know, power tools are always cool. Later, we all put on hard hats to build a playground. Kieon put one on me. It was awesome. (Yes I just said wearing a plastic hat that is too small for my head was awesome.) Taniah, who also wanted to have a, “Where you at! I’ll call you back!” conversation started to engage with some materials. Together we built a swing from a shoe string and a piece of plastic. We tried to make a plastic boy swing but his legs didn’t bend so we decided to build a slide. Taniah really had a hard time moving beyond a constant chatter and cursory engagement with materials until we started working to together. Another boy, George, came over to join us. Then Taniah decided she was going to build her own swing. We got distracted and then it was time to clean up.
After that interaction it was like something changed with Taniah. She didn’t test me as much. She also didn’t fuss with her friends as much either. It was like before, she was a balloon being bounced around the classroom never settling in one place. After that is was like I had fastened a string to her. She still bounced and tugged but we were connected.
I love teaching.
(By the way, none of these names are real.)
