Music and Sand

Today I spent a few hours with the toddlers, but since there were a couple extra teachers, I spent most of the time in the classroom cleaning and taking care of other things while the kids were either napping or outside. Towards the end of the day when there were only two kids left, one of the girls decided she wanted to play the drum. It’s a medium sized drum with two sticks. We both took one. Her drumming was loud of course so I showed her that she could drum quietly as well which didn’t last long. She kept trying to put the sticks back into holders on the drum, but she couldn’t quite push them in. I’d get them started for her, but then she realized it worked better if she pushed them in with her foot. We also tested what the sticks sounded like when moved across the drum and on three different balls. After a while she pushed them away and went back to loud drumming with both sticks. One of the supervisors came in and told her that she loved her music. They had one of those stability balls in the room so she loved bouncing on that too. She thought it was fun to fall off. This girl usually gets into trouble almost every day, but today she was doing great. She didn’t get in trouble at all and on the playground, she skipped around telling everyone how happy she was.

I stopped by the infant room to see if the teacher in there needed help. Crawling Baby came over to the gate and started to whine at me so I picked him up and talked to him for a few minutes. When I went to put him down, he started to cry so I tried to get him to play with a couple toys, but then the teacher suggested I take him to the sand box. He was happy out there. He liked watching me shovel sand into a bucket. I’d do it in different ways. Sometimes, I’d slowly let the sand fall into the bucket or quickly dump it in which he thought was funny. I started to dump the bucket because I thought he’d enjoy seeing the big pile of sand, but he didn’t want me to. He wanted me to keep shoveling and patting. I started to tell him about the texture of the sand when he spotted his mom on the preschool playground. I held his hands and we walked over to her. She told me how much Crawling Baby loves the sand box, but I think he was glad to be going home.

Lack of Inspiration

I’m writing to explain why I haven’t been posting regularly. It’s because of a lack of inspiration. Recently, I applied for a job at a childcare center. The job was working with two-year-olds. They had one teacher working with four or five kids and it seemed consistent. I liked how one teacher worked with a few specific kids who meant that you’d really get to know them instead of trying to keep track of fifteen kids and all their information. They interviewed me and I had an hour of observation time at the center. Obviously, I didn’t get this job and it was disappointing.

In the spring, a similar thing happened when I applied to a new program working with infants and toddlers. They interviewed me, but there was no follow up. At least with the second job, they contacted me to tell me that I didn’t get it. This has been going on since I graduated last year and it’s been frustrating. Every time I start thinking there’s hope for a new beginning at a new center, it falls through.

That’s one of the sources of my lack of inspiration. The other source is my current job. I’m not saying anything negative about where I work. I’m only saying that there’s no room to grow as a substitute. When I was an intern and last year when I covered for someone who was out for many weeks, I was able to do my own lesson plans and I felt like I was contributing something. I miss the creative part of the job. Also, as a substitute, you don’t have much input into anything. You just do what they tell you and cover for whoever is missing. Yes, you gain experience by working more days with kids than you would have otherwise, but, then what? They also have a few volunteers that come in too and it makes it difficult with so many adults in the room. The kids aren’t sure who to listen to or who will be there from one day to the next. Sometimes I feel bad because I’ll be there all week and then I won’t show up again until another whole week has passed. All the kids know me since I’ve worked there for a long time so when I’m not there, they wonder where I’ve been. The other thing is with all those adults, some of us end up with nothing to do. On some days, we’ve almost had one adult per child and that’s usually not necessary especially in the older group. If you want to be actually working on something with the kids, you have to almost race to get there first.

I’m not saying the job is pointless because you can always be there to assist or play with one of the kids. I’m saying that I’d like more responsibility and to have more say in my work. Once in a while, I’ll find special books to bring, make a homemade display or plan a quick activity when everyone else is out of ideas, but I haven’t been able to do most of those things for months. In most cases, when I bring something special or plan something, I feel like it’s not wanted or like I’m invading someone’s territory. Some of the people I work with get very territorial about their groups and will only let certain people help them out. I’m not a pushy person and I usually ask before doing anything there, but many times I think, why did I bother? I wondered if anyone who reads my blog has felt that way.

For now, I think I’ll focus my blog more on lesson plans and if I get more inspiration to do random activities I’ll post those. I’ll try to do a couple lesson plans per week since they take longer than the activity posts. I think my upcoming themes will be families, colors, pets and of course Halloween. Then I can start getting into winter themes and I always have fun with those. I’d like to thank all the people who have posted comments. I appreciate all of them.