Adventures in ECE

One day, one of the little girls who usually stays until 5:30 or so was nowhere to be found shortly after a new staff came on duty.

She counted the kids and thought she should have one more than she did.  So she checked the attendance log - and she still had not enough kids.

She noticed which one was missing…. and had a brief moment of panic when she double-checked and discovered that according to the log, that child should still be in the classroom.

Turns out mom had picked her up early …and the staff had forgotten to sign her out.

Fortunately, the worker in another room knew that she had gone home early …but oy! What a panic!

Really - who would ever want to call a parent and ask if they had their kid or not. Yikes!

Different centres handle toilet training issues differently….  at one place that I worked at, if parents were trying to toilet train, we would support that by suggesting a trip to the potty every 10 minutes or so.

 Where I am now, though, it really is not seen as a priority - and unless the child actively asks to go, they probably won’t get taken.

I get that for teachers it is a lot easier if the kids are in diapers until they are fully trained - but I really think we should do more to support potty training efforts.

So….I keep asking, even if its not “done”.

Gotta love it when you get to work with people that don’t really pay attention.

One day, I had a new person working in my room. She was having a great time sitting at an activity table with a little girl…. and I was trying to keep track of the other 10.

I was sitting at the cutting table, where 2 kids were cutting with scissors.

Great activity, that… good for hand eye motor skills.

Not so good, when kids start pulling things off shelves and creating a rucus …and the other staff can’t be bothered to pay any attention at all.

I turned my head to break up a fight happening in the car centre and sure enough, one of the little darlings at the scissor table made use of the opportunity to cut her hair.

She managed to cut about an inch off a hunk in the back …..  which is somewhat less ambitious than I was when I was that age - I managed to chop my hair to the scalp a few days before I was to be the ringbearer in my aunt’s wedding.

I guess it could have been worse…. thank goodness the mom was cool with it!

January was a ~lovely~ month.  Every possible cold, flu, virus & bug…. and I DO mean bug ….as in lice… has gone through the centre.

And of course, it’s not just the kids that catch them. Us big people manage to catch some of almost everything too… but fortunately, I managed to stick with just a cold & flu. I am SO glad that I skipped the lice thing!

It wouldn’t be AS bad if we could keep the cooties in one room at a time - but most of our kids seem to have siblings who also attend - so whatever we have goes right through every room.

One of the biggest reasons for the problem is parents that think that they can get around the rules by dosing their kids up with medicine before they drop them off…. it doesn’t work - we are not that dumb. It is pretty easy to find out that the mommy or daddy gave them medicine in the morning …. as soon as a kid starts looking punky, we ASK. And guess what? Kids that little TELL.

Of course - by then it is too late…but at least we know who to blame.

AND we call and ask them to come and pick their kid up - and then they aren’t allowed back until at least 24 hours later.

Trying to settle a group of 16 preschoolers for a nap - all in one room - is not always the easiest part of my job.

You have to know what each of the kids likes, which ones will settle easily, and which ones need to be far, far away from anything that might be even in the least bit entertaining. That can include things like the edge of the carpet, a name tag taped on the end of their bed, or even a tiny hole in the wall. And of course, one must keep track of which kids need to be kept away from each other.

Getting everyone situated so that there is the least amount of distraction can be fun - especially in places like ours where the group can change from one day to the next.

Once we get them all in the right places, we need to know which ones like which blankets, pillows, etc… and of course, which like to have their backs rubbed and who prefer to be patted or - better yet - left alone. And once all of them are finally asleep, it can seem like the longest most boring hour ever!!!

It isn’t so bad if there is work to do - program planning or preparation or whatever - but when there isn’t, naptime can be sooooooooooooooooooooo long.

Fire drills are so much fun. You had fire drills in school right? So you know what they are like.

Well, in day cares, they can be even more fun. Especially when they happen during sleep time.

And especially when they are not planned fire drills, but real fire alarms because someone somewhere else in the building has had a problem and pulled the alarm. Yes, during nap time. Yes, in the winter.

And of course, during nap time, who wears shoes? Most of our kids remove their shoes at nap time - and many also take their socks off too.

So when the alarm went off, we had to usher more than 60 kids under the age of 6 out into the cold without their socks and shoes. Fortunately, we grabbed as many blankets as we could from the beds on our way out, so we were able to lay out blankets on the ground, huddle a bunch of kids together, and cover them up as best we could.

Since then, we’ve changed things - so that now when the kids go down for their naptime, all of their shoes go into one basket by the door. They’re still responsible for their own socks, though - which is enough of a problem at the best of times.

During a fire drill is not the best of times. But it does give everyone something to talk about.

And did you know that fire trucks can show up very, very quickly for day cares? They did for ours - and blocked off two streets within minutes too. Good to know.

With the holidays, lots of our families celebrate Christmas - or not - with different traditions and beliefs.

There is always at least one that has been told that there is no such thing as Santa Claus - and of course, there are also kids who firmly believe that there is.

The other day, while a group of children were talking about what they were asking Santa for Christmas, one child piped up and started to say that there is no Santa Claus.

Fortunately, that particular child stutters - so before he could get out the sentence that

my parents told me that there is no …. no…. no….

we were able to interupt him and derail the conversation. Distraction can be a wonderful tool!

Seems to me that no matter how much cleaning or how fast we do it, the kids are always faster.

I no sooner finish putting a basket onto the shelf, turn around, and it is all over the floor again…. and you never seem to be able to catch which kid did it, either.

Of course, there are the usual suspects, but somehow they always manage to be off in another part of the room looking totally innocent.

There are a few things I have found that can help:

1. Never leave the puzzle centre unattended! And always have only 1 or 2 puzzles out at a time. It can be very time-consuming to have to sort puzzles - even when they are fairly simple ones.
2. If children are old enough, have them put their name on a chart for the area they’re playing in - then you know which kids should be helping to clean it up.
3. Wear running shoes and move fast
4. oh yeah - and don’t let cleaning fluids spalsh in your eyes, either.

From my previous post about sorting by colour, you might have gotten the impression that I am organized.

That would be a big fat NOT!

One of my biggest challenges in working in daycares is making sure I know where all of my paperwork is.  I am supposed to keep track of

• my immunizations
• my health card
• my diploma
• my criminal record check
• my proof of first aid and CPR training

And the WORST thing is that I am supposed to know where those things are when it is time to get them redone.

Right now, the most pressing thing is that I need to have my TB test redone by January. To do that, I need my healthcard.

To get that working again, I have to find my birth certificate, my old health card, an envelope that was sent to me in the mail at this address, and another piece of id. ALL AT THE SAME TIME. As if! And then I have to find my way to the OHIP office. Uh yeah… I know where that is. NOT.

I am not wired that way.

Maybe if they were all the same colour!

…is a test of who among us is the most neurotic.

We have multicoloured cups and plates and bowls… it makes perfect sense to me to keep the red cups with the red cups and the blue plates with the blue plates and the…. well, you get the idea.

Apparently, this is weird. Or something. But I am not the only one that does it, HONEST!

And anyway, it is not like it takes any more time than doing it the messy way.

I like them my way.

But just so we are clear, I would much rather be in a classroom than the kitchen.

In the classroom I can keep myself occupied putting the red beads with the red beads and the green megablocks with the… well, you get the idea.

Sometimes tattling gets them in trouble - sometimes it gets you.

It is pretty funny sometimes…. kids will come running to complain that she - or he “hit me back first!”

When I point out that they should not have hit at all, they whine “yeah, but s/he hit me BACK!”

Oh the humanity.

One of my favourite complaints is “She yelled at me LOUDER!”

It is not like any of the kids really get in a whole lot of trouble though - we use short time-outs for discipline; the child is sent to go sit in a chair, and they are allowed to rejoin the group as soon as they’re calm enough.

 The concept of sharing can tend to be very black and white for 3 year olds…

Children are taught to share. If they want to use a toy that another child is using they ask to share. If a child comes to ask and use a toy that they are using, they should share. Now the grey area….child A has a toy that they just got off the shelf- child B now wants to use it-so child B goes and asks child A to share-child A says NO because they just got the toy off the shelf-child B goes to a teacher and says that child A is not sharing-teacher then steps in and makes child A share the toy—

Child A had the toy taken away unfairly under the pretence of sharing and then just takes the toy back from child B while using the phrase “you need to share” as a reason to take the toy back. As a teacher, who has witnessed the entire act-from child A getting the toy first, to them getting it back, I’m asking you who would you allow to play with the toy?

*Just for the record, I sided with child A–I explained to child B that they had to wait 5 minutes to play with the toy and told child A to explain to the teacher next time that they had just gotten the toy themselves.*

One day while I was assigned to kitchen duties, I was sent to the infant room to start the break schedule.

Shortly after I got there, one of the babies started crying and fussing so I went over to pick her up. She started coughing - and then I heard that oh so charming gag that every ECE worker recognizes. Not like I could just drop her - and we are not even supposed to make faces or say YUCK …would not do to make baby think you did not like her.

So I held her and smiled while the sweet little baby puked all over me.

Fortunately there were some extra shirts around from field trips. It could have been a lot worse. But still. It was pretty darn icky … because of our child:staff ratios I could not leave until the other staff came back a half an hour later. By then I was MORE than ready to get out of there.

Sometimes the challenge of working in day care is not the kids, it is the other workers.

 Some of them tend to be a lot more rigid than I would be. One day, for example, a 3 year old cried when his mom dropped him off. The rule is that the kid that gets picked to be the leader is one who has had really good behaviour - and this kid did - except for the crying in the morning thing.

Me, I think that for a three year old, being upset when Mommy leaves is to be expected. I do not count it as inappropriate behaviour at all.

But the other worker applies the same expectations to every child. So if a 6 year old is expected not to cry and carry on at being left, so is a 3 year old.

Someone needs a consequence - and it is not one of the kids!

As a recent (okay it’s been a year or so, but whatever) graduate of Early Childhood Education (ECE) and as someone who is new to the workforce as an ECE, I have in the past few weeks, been privileged enough to encounter some highly interesting and somewhat hilarious (if not somewhat gross and unfortunate for me anyway) stories and events that take place at my job. I am planning to write about my place of employment, the kids who make my job what it is and other general things relating to ECE. I would try and promise not to include the details of some stories that may not be entirely stomach-worthy, but I won’t, cus really where’s the fun in that…and besides, without the gory details, you just won’t be able to get the full effect of what I deal with on basically a daily basis.