With Friday being a free time day, I thought I wasn’t able to do my projects, but i thought it would be useful since there was no listening ears today and the children seem to be in a mood. I let C know that i have a project for them to do if that was ok, she agreed to let me do my project, I went to get my project out and called the children over, JF was still doing 2 kiddies at a time for tumble time, but I felt it was much needed to do my project while we waited for the 10 minutes for the next two children to have their turn.
Couple of days before today, I wrapped a bunch of Dinosaurs in painters tape individually, at first I was wrapping them a little more snug then I should have, but CT let me know that we should make them loose because we don’t know how they will do with taking the tape off, and I mentioned the ages and she agreed that with the ages, the younger ones will have a little more troubles than the older ones.
Free the Dinosaurs, C told the kiddies it’s time to listen to Stephanie now, I explained to them that we need to free the Dinosaurs, I gave them one each and gave them the opportunity to figure out what they needed to do and wait, after a minute of waiting and watching, they asked for help, so I grabbed the one who was asking for help and took a smidge off of tape from the Dinosaur, then gave it back, it took off from there. The children watched the one kiddie and they mimicked the kiddie. As predicted, a few kiddies found it easy, so I OH! you need a challange do you? I gave him them one of the snug ones, and sure enough, it took a little bit more time, but they were able to do it, when I gave the few kiddies an easy one again, they came apart easy, I I kept giving them the harder ones because giving them the easy one, they would unwrap it all in no time giving no time for the younger ones. Love the name of the activity Free the Dinosaurs!
While watching, a few used their teeth to try to open it, they asked for help, giving it to me and C, one was Difficult, even for us, I had to give the kiddie another, after letting the tape dry, I tried again, but still, took a little bit to take the tape off. Another kiddie enjoyed playing with the tape once and a while, touching the sticky side, and I said “Is that sticky?” they nodded and looked at their finger, but they noticed, it doesn’t stay on their finger, so the kiddies continued to unwrap the Dinosaur. Great for fine motor and also for providing an activity to sustain focus!
In between freeing the Dinosaurs, they would play with them. I would ask them about the colors of the Dinos and was the tape hard or easy for them. some said it was easy, others said it was hard and it was fun for them. They wanted to unwrap more but I didn’t do a lot, I wasn’t sure how they would take a liking to this project, but now I know.
After freeing the Dinosaurs, I handed out cup that have been colored by JF, I said it was color matching time! I helped by placing a yellow Dinosaur in a yellow cup, with no success, I asked, who has a yellow Dinosaur? they started to put their hands up and saying I DO! then I said ok, it goes in the yellow cup, then I continued with the other colors, then they came to me with their colored cups saying witch color they had in their cups, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE. Soon after, we started to play with the Dinosaurs and started to color coordinate, then after they lost interest, I tried to ask them about the different Dinosaurs, but with no luck, we put them away.
Again, soon after, they kiddies started to get rambunctious. I said to C that I have one more project if we wanted to do it. She said yes, I went to grab my last project, Dinosaur Skeleton.
For this project, I laminated dinosaurs and cut them out so it was easier for the kiddies to trace. The kiddies would use running glue to dip with their Q-tips and they would make their skeleton. A few times I would show the kiddies to dip their Q-tip in the glue and put it on the paper and explained that the glue would help keep the bones in place, but it would take a little bit longer to dry. I would ask what dinosaur they would doing, I had troubles naming them since the dinosaurs have difficult names, but I did the best I could with remembering and pronouncing them properly, but it made them laugh.
watching them trace and place the glue down, it was sweet to watch. One kiddie wanted to make two, one for mom and one for dad.
I was happy to do my projects with them, it was exciting, I felt proud! making up these projects were difficult for me, was it the right age range? would there be no interests, and one of them was a learning process for sure.
I forgot to mention that I was leaving, I haven’t told the kiddies, for that I feel bad. I was only able to give one kiddie a hug at the end of my practicum. I felt I was being present with them, in the moment, not thinking of anything else. I wasn’t able to tell the kiddies Thursday, Friday’s they don’t have a lot of kiddies as they normally do during the rest of the week.
Great way to end your practicum time with these children Stephanie!
Nov 29, 2024