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...
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Breanne, you are right, toddlers really enjoy throwing and dumping things. I think all of your options on how to handle this situation can be used and sometimes it is going to depend on who is using the material. For instance, I have a couple of students who dump things just to test me, I can see it in their eyes, and I act diferently with them than with a child that is dumping something as part of satisfying his developmental needs.
ReplyDeleteI have a story. I too put out a container with oatmeal on the shelf for the kiddos, and just like your students, they loved it and many of them where dumping it on the floor. Well, the funny part of this is that I chose to put it out on the day Sibohan came to do my last observation :)... Yes, the oatmeal was all over the floor (even stuck to someone's nose thanks to her mucus). Many thoughts ran through my mind, and what I decided to do was to not react. I just ask the other toddler teacher to let me use her electric sweeper, and I began to clean the oatmeal. Because the sweeper was so cool, the boys who had dumped the oatmeal wanted to help me clean. Then others wanted to use the sweeper, and the children were engaged cleaning the floor for about 15 minutes. Siobhan thought it was funny and a good way to recruit the children to clean their mess...I have to confess that I have not had oatmeal out in a while just to keep my staff and myself sane! Hahaha.
If you are interested in the sweeper, it is called Shark and you can find it at Target.com
I am also getting three children on the same day, June 8th, and they are 18 months. Yeah, I am not looking forward to that, but I have learned that when it comes to enrollment, group numbers, and students' starting dates, I always lose :) So I just try to prepare myself and make the best of the situation...Do let us know how it went??
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