This semester I am placed in Miss Amy’s Ida Sue preschool at the Gault Family Learning Center. When I arrive at my placement daily, the children are midway through their nap time. This nap period lasts for the first forty-five minutes that I am there. The next forty-five minutes, following nap time, is an opportunity for the children to engage in free-play. On Monday and Wednesday when I am there for an addition half hour, I help the children get their coats on and we make our way to one of the lobbys in order to wait for the busses.
While I am not able to observe much in the form of formal instruction during this time, I am being given the opportunity to work with a diverse group of children. I have not had much experience with disabilities outside of Wooster’s Teaching Children with Special Needs class, so I do see this experience being a beneficial one. This class also has several typically developing children in it, so I am also able to see the children’s interactions with eachother.
The children that I have met and interacted with so far have been so wonderful. They are already forming strong connections with me, wanting my help with a game or puzzle, or wanting me to help them with their coats. There is one girl who specifically wanted to sit on my lap when we had a visitor come to read a story.
I did not have the opportunity to do very much this week, outside of helping the children with the tasks I have mentioned above, but I do have an artifact from the field to share. This artifact is the number boards and pegs that I showed in class on Friday. I believe that there are many examples of how this artifact could be used in an instructional basis. Some suggestions for topics that could utilize this artifact are: counting, sorting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and word problems.
Field Hours: 7
Support Hours: 1
Hi Melissa! Amy and Maggie are amazing (I was there last semester and Amy was one of my brother’s best friends growing up as well as our mothers are very close friends currently.) I absolutely love working with all of the kids! They both are wonderful and understanding teachers and it is nice to see that they both know when to push a child or when they need to give the children some extra time. It is also nice when those kids connect with you. Some may be shy (more so on T/H than on M/W) but all of the kids will end up connecting with you. I miss working with them all terribly! It sounded like you had a nice week! Great artifact photos! When I was there, I did not have the opportunity to see those pegs.
Comment by aault09 — February 11, 2008 @ 12:58 am