Straight from the Sunbeams

I realized that I am very negative on my blog. So I decided that I need to report back on how teaching the lovely sunbeams are going. Last Sunday was actually really fun. Plus, the kids just say the funniest things. Here was my first conversation with a girl in our class while we were waiting for sharing time to start.

Girl: Where is Sally (another girl in the class)? (I’m using fictional names because since they aren’t actually my kids, I don’t want to exploit them without permission).
Me: I don’t know.
Girl: Why isn’t she here?
Me: Maybe she is on a trip with her family.
Girl: Where is Sally?
Me trying to figure out why she just can’t accept the fact that Sally is NOT there: I don’t know but we can ask her next week.
Girl: But WHY isn’t she here TODAY?
Me realizing that 3 year olds are still in the “why” phase: I don’t know… Hey look at that picture!
Distraction seemed to work.

We also had a little drama. Apparently there were two boys with “lots of energy” as the Primary President explained in one class, so they wanted to give us one (oh and did I mention we already have a boy with “lots of energy” in our class) and trade out the cutest, smartest, and best behaved boy in our class. Since I really didn’t feel like I could say no they just did the trade anyway. The boy they took out of our class seemed fine sitting with his new class in sharing and singing time but about 10 minutes after we went to our classrooms, his Mom brought him back in and said that he wanted to be in our class and they would trade another kid. I was so happy! It also made me feel like we’ve done something right, if he refused to go to another class. His Mom said that he loves being in our class.

So now we have two boys with “lots of energy” in our class. They are actually quite entertaining at times. We separate them so Neil is sitting by one and I am sitting by the other. Our class is divided between two rows. So the boy behind my row sitting by Neil was being noisy so the boy next to me turned around and said, “If you don’t be quiet then they will send you back to nursery or to your parents like they do in nursery.” So that made the other boy cry. Then the first boy turned to me and said, “Isn’t that right teacher?” I just told them both to be quiet and tried not to laugh. I wanted to say yes.

We also have one girl that has no idea about proper social cues. She actually took a handful of crayons during our craft time and smashed them on Neil’s pants. It was not appropriate but it was kind of funny too. Although, Neil did NOT think it was funny one bit because then he had crayon on his pants. She also refuses to sit in her seat during sharing time and during our classroom time. She constantly just gets up and wanders around the room taking things from people. Any ideas on how we stop that behavior?