Freshly Certified.... and NOW WHAT?!?

Okay, so I came back to school today fresh and invigorated from all the great conversation and advice I received from you guys.

However, I still feel like a few hours into the day I am still as exasperated and frustrated as ever. I am still so unclear on some very specific things. First, I was reading Aidee's post from like forever ago when you talked about the dry work that ended up all over the room... okay here was my experience...

I put out a bowl filled with dry oatmeal and hid several very small (smallest I could find) pom poms in the oatmeal. The kids really loved it of course, but there were a few children who could not stop dumping the entire bowl onto the floor. Now, oatmeal is very hard to clean up... and it was very messy. I had one of the children help me sweep it up a few times and moved the bowl to a better location. The move seemed to help with the all out dumping but some spilling was still involved. Just like Aidee, I am at a loss as to how to handle this situation and others like it. I know that Toddler really enjoy dumping things out on the floor and the oatmeal is no exception, should I let them do it and then ask them to clean it up. Should I redirect them to something that is more appropriate for dumping like blocks? Should I tell them they are done with it if they dump it? So many different options and I don't know which one is best...

Oh, also just found out that I can be expecting THREE new children to start on June 2nd. Three new children on the same day... is my admin INSANE!!! I confronted my administrator about it, and told her that it would be too much to have 3 children start on the same day. She said that I should see it as a blessing since so many other schools have low enrollment right now and we do not (at least in the toddler dept.) I do see her point, but she didn't seem to see mine... is there any sort of compromise available here? Grrr. this is going to be interesting...