It was kind of cold and most of the kids were inside...instead of having to ref soccer like I would usually do if I was outside I sat at the picnic tables and made tons of bracelets and necklaces and tied LOTS of knots. It's pretty much the one part of making the bracelets the kids refuse (or don't know how) to do. So I end up tying all the beginning knots, and sizing them around their little wrists. It was actually fun...They were telling me stories about their little lives and asking me questions about Vaya...I found out alot about them. Really cool. Then I decided we hadn't played with chalk in a really long time, and I hadn't seen the kids playing hopscotch in awhile, so I got out the chalk and drew three long ass hopscotch boards, then sent them out to find a rock to call their own. One kid came back with a huge pile of perfect sized rocks and alot of the kids used the ones he picked. The kids helped me number all the squares. They REALLY wanted to be the ones writing the numbers, and why not? It got them counting and participating. After that we started racing. Everyone, three at a time (there were three hopscotch boards lined up next to eachother each one about 29 squares long) We threw our rocks down and raced to get em. It was pretty fun for awhile. Of course everyone wanted to race ME! and I let them win by a hair. I was doing the hopscotch perfectly but the kids were just jumping up and down, grabbing rocks, throwing stuff...It was really fun!
Then I went inside because there is Torch Club on Fridays and I am in charge of it, so I got all the kids in there, and we had gotten all these gold pins in the mail (the kind you put on your coat)...and so I got to give them to the kids. I basically gave them to the officers and the few that were left over I gave to the officers to give to the kids they thought best deserved them...one girl actually gave me hers back. She told me she didnt think anyone else deserved one, and I agreed with her. The meeting was really frustrating. There are only about 12 kids in "torch club" and four of them are "officers"...The rest of the kids are just there to be there, they don't really know why...so they are just yelling at each other (officers vs reg kids) pretty much the whole time. I don't want to take the power away from the officers, because why else would they even come!? but I don't want the officers to be scaring away new kids who might otherwise come to the meetings, so IDK I'm kind of at a stand still there... don't really know what to do on that one...I am going to stage a test about TORCH CLUB and maybe that will give the kids some sense of direction, maybe give out some prizes to kids who remember to bring their Torch Club card...doing something really fun despite the problems with their social understanding...they can just never stop yelling and arguing!
Oh well, Today in Torch Club we talked about doing a "buddy day" and we voted on what to teach the littler kids (our buddies)...I was told to do the "buddy day" by Tonya and it is a good idea, I just wish I had more time to plan for it. We are doing it next week. We voted on whether to teach the littler kids how to make a homemade pizza or how to make a smoothie. I think we settled on both. Dumb. We don't even have a pizza maker, but my boss might and if she does we are gonna use hers. That means next week we'll be making pizza and smoothies. I'll go to the store and get all the stuff to make pizza and smoothies and then set it all up and then we'll teach the kids how to do it. It's gonna be a horrible HORRIBLE mess. I think I am going to have VERY strict rules that day...I also have to figure out how many little kids are we going to teach? If I have one rookie to every one Torch Club member that is gonna be almost 30 kids, and 22 of them aren't going to be able to even BEGIN to know how to handle it. My bigger kids will be arguing with NOT ONLY themselves, but also the little kids and UGH! Maybe I can do them in small groups. They are my buddies, and my buddies are the littler kids buddies, but even then. I have 22 kids sitting waiting for 4-5 minutes at a time and I have to make like 15 smoothies basically by myself. UGh. It's gonna be SUCH chaos. How I am suppose to do it, IDK. I'm definitely going to be asking about that on Monday. I am a little worried about it and will be brainstorming throughout the weekend...let me know if you have any ideas!!! :)
I am so pissed I just left you a long comment and it didn't post.
ReplyDeleteawwwh! wtf. That suuuucks.
ReplyDeleteOkay so I think the long comment I posted that the computer ate went something like this:
ReplyDeleteThe first paragraph of this blog made me so incredibly happy. That you spent time getting to know about the kids, and helping them with something they wanted to make and then playing a game with them. Its so important to kids and they are things that we just seem as trivial or silly at times.
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I actually have to have a weekly class meeting in my room for Olweus (its our bullying prevention program)
The first meeting the students created our rules. Such as Be a great listener, no bullying or fighting, everyone has a right to speak... etc.. so maybe you could have a meeting where you set some ground rules, guidelines, or something and ask for everyones input and then overnight create a poster or something of the new guidelines (no yelling allowed...etc). not to be a jerk, just to make sure it is a great event for everyone. Rewarding those who behave properly is always great or even just saying "Thanks so much Sami for being a great listener!"
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Sorry that does sound like a mess.. I'm not sure when this is happening or if it did yet.. but you could have the younger kids (not sure on age here) count or name things off for you. the older kids could be responsible for more difficult tasks and you could assign a clean up crew? just ideas.
Also, the fact that you had so many ups and downs in a day shows how much you care about your job and the children. If you didn't care then you.. well you wouldn't care and you wouldn't have feelings about it.