Since Miss Jessika has been very ill, this is day four of my time subbing for her. First class: Phonics. This week we are learning about the letter 'X'. Yes, that's right--we learn about one single letter alllll week. As you can imagine, it's quite riveting. First I went over the vocabulary words (ox, ax, fox, box). Then we sang the same song over and over and over. I know you're dying to know the lyrics. I won't deny you.
"I see an ox *mooo*. I see an ax *chop chop*. I see a sick fox *awww*. I see a box. What's that? What's that? The fox has chicken pox!"
In case you are trying to imagine what kind of melody could possibly fit these words, stop. You won't be able to guess it. It's not a familiar childhood song; it's a one-of-a-kind original. After trying to get this into their little noggins, we sang a little chant with the vocab words and then another one over the letter 'X'. We did this for about forty minutes.
Second period: La Merienda (breakfast/snack). This is a somewhat relaxing time as long as juice spills and food falls stay at a minimum. I hear a lot of "open please!" and "for you" as the kids either need help opening their many cookies and juice boxes or don't want them.
Next up: Bible. My class. Although somehow it's not nearly as fun when I'm with them all day. Thankfully today was a fun and easy day in Bible class. We sang, prayed, reviewed the story with vocab pictures, and make donkeys out of play dough. This kept them happy and occupied and gave me time to finish writing in all twenty-three of their notebooks. They each have notebooks that we have to send home with hand written homework every day. Today's homework was Big X and Little X. They had to color my odd-shaped block letter X's and then practice writing each of the letters for a page.
After Bible we had math class. Math class this week is learning the number 13. So we counted to thirteen in different ways, sang a counting song I made up on the spot, and then they colored the number 13 (again in my wonderful block letters. Did I mention I was never one of those girls who were awesome at bubble or any big fancy letters? haha). Since the workbooks Miss Jessika uses in her classes are kind of expensive, pre-k isn't allowed to make any copies. That means Miss Rosita and I had to hand copy all those 13's. Thankfully, she is an expert so it went pretty quickly.
Next the kids got a short twenty minutes outside in the playground. The rest of the day flew. The "Theme of the Day" for this week is clothes. Thus we spent more time singing. I'll spare you the lyrics this time. Lastly, for Fine Motor, the kids cut out little paper clothes and pasted them on the little paper kids. Whew...I made it through the morning, 'Not so bad,' I told myself. 'Now time to repeat.'
I was supposed to have about fifty minutes to relax and eat my lunch. However, a strange dog got in through the preschool fence, and I had to chase it out. I successfully shooed it away and headed out of preschool world towards the teacher's room--only to see the dog again! It had come in a different door, and MY prepa kids (who were in the middle of lunch) were touching it! My instinctive mom-like behavior kicked in high gear as I started telling my kids, "NO! Don't touch the dog. It's dirty. Sucio. NO TOCANDO!" as I tried to get the dog away from their little hands. Emily B. tried helping, but we weren't getting anywhere fast. The mangy little mutt was obviously intelligent, and it wasn't about to leave all that food.
Not only was this a strange dog, but it's dirty white fur was matted and it's pink skin was showing, especially around the eyes, giving it quite a diseased look. We simply had to get it away from the kids. I grabbed a chicken bone from Miguel's plate and waved it in the dog's face. Bingo. I took off running with the dog trailing close behind. We sailed through the front door and I went all the way to the gate, throwing the bone a nice distance away. However, in minutes it was back! This was starting to feel like a bad dream. I wasn't giving it any more reasons to come back in. This time I lured it outside with the bone, but I kept the bone instead of throwing it. We figured out the dog was squeezing through the preschool gate. Ridiculous. After about four or five times, I did what I could and went to eat my lunch with my remaining precious half hour.
My afternoon kiddos showed up at noon. We went through more or less the same schedule, ending at 3:30. There were only eleven of them today, so it was much less demanding than the morning bunch. Miss Rosita (the assistant) disappeared for an hour, and I was a little concerned something had happened to her. She is pretty much the most reliable, capable, and sweet person ever. When she came back, she was apologetic and carrying a ton of copies she had been making for school related stuff. But anyway, it was not problem at all since I had so few kids. Overall, I had a very busy day at school. I'll be really happy to see Miss Jessika whenever she is well enough to come back. Nevertheless, I was able to stay pretty positive and cheery--thank the Lord.
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