Testing The Limmits

Today was the first day that we’ve gone outside since I’ve been volunteering with the toddlers. We were out there for a half an hour. I thought it was cold, but it was good for them to get out and get rid of all that extra energy. They mostly walked around in the snow, but some of them went on slides and on the swings. One girl got angry because she couldn’t get on the slide that was made for the preschoolers. That lasted a few minutes until she found something else to do. The youngest girl who is sixteen-months-old was cautious about walking in the snow. She started to walk and then fell down. She laughed, but seemed worried about what would happen if she got back up. Eventually, she stood there, but wouldn’t move. I walked over and asked her if she wanted to hold my hand and try to walk through the snow. She thought about it for a minute and grabbed my hand. We walked to the swing set that was a few feet away and she started climbing up the steps to the slide. Another toddler seemed concerned about trying the slide, but had a big smile on her face when she finally slid down.

After we went in, the toddlers worked on today’s art activity which was drawing with crayons. They were given a blank piece of paper and a large crayon. Each kid had a different color. We went around the table a few times repeating names of colors. The children were confused about which color they had. One boy had orange, but the girl next to him had green. The boy thought he had green and the girl thought she had orange. That was never really understood, but the kids had fun naming the colors. Most of the kids did scribbles, some crooked lines and dots, but a couple of them were able to draw shapes like circles and squares. One boy informed us that circles were round. After a while the kids switched colors, but the coloring turned to crumpling of papers. That was until one of the toddlers discovered that if you tap the crayon on the paper, you’ll make dots. Then everyone started doing that until the teacher asked them to stop because they were being too rough with the crayons. It went back to the paper crumpling until the teacher took their papers to write names on them.

It was back to play time where the boys were riding bikes and the girls were walking around, climbing on the climber or in the home corner. They kept testing their limits on the bikes. One boy was insistent on crashing into another one with his bike until the teacher said it wasn’t safe, but he continued to do it until he almost got the bike taken away. Then another boy decided that he wanted to play with a bike and a puzzle at the same time. The problem was that someone else wanted the puzzle and the pieces were all over the place. We were trying to keep the puzzles and their pieces together on the table so one of the rules was that if you wanted to work on puzzles that you had to stay at the table. Finally, someone else wanted the bike too. The boy was mad about choosing and decided he was going to dump out his puzzle pieces and then put the flat part of the puzzle on top of his bike seat. That way if he was sitting on it, no one could get it from him. Eventually, we noticed and told him to bring the puzzle back to the table. I helped him back to the table, but he chose not to work on the puzzles. Meanwhile, someone else took the bike because he chose not to use it. He was upset about this for a few minutes until another bike was free. Then the group of boys decided to tip their bikes over and push them around and try to ride them with the wheels in the air. They kept getting caught in the bikes and falling off so we decided it wasn’t safe. If you wanted to ride bikes, you had to ride them the proper way. One of the boys got really upset because after three or four times of telling him that he could either ride the bike properly or not use it, we had to take it away. I asked him if he was ready to use the bike the right way and he said no so I left it under the table. Eventually, he was able to think about it and decided to ride the right way.

Then it was back to the puzzle table. One kid decided to throw all the puzzle pieces on the floor and a few other toddlers joined him. I kept trying to clean up the mess, but they continued to throw the pieces all over the floor. They were also stomping on the puzzles and I thought they’d break them so I tried to tell them not to stomp on the toys. They threw pieces on the floor almost all the way through clean up time. After several times of telling them to stop, they did, but then they went on to testing their limits with another teacher while they were washing their hands for lunch. They played in the water, were messing with the toilet and not coming over when they were called. Lunch went okay and then we read books. There were a few times during the stories where the children were pushing, but it wasn’t a big deal. Then at nap time, most of them settled right down because they were so tired. One girl who usually wants to nap kept crying and didn’t want to lay on her mat. I tried to calm her down, but she kept getting up and running around the room. She’s the youngest and was recently moved up from the infant room. It’s taken her a while to get used to the routine. She doesn’t talk yet and she spends a lot of time near the door. She eventually settled down after one of the regular teachers sat with her. Most of them slept up until a few minutes before I left. They seemed happier after nap. I know there are days like these. This isn’t the first one I’ve had and it won’t be the last. It was a day of testing limits.