Day Five: The Second Half of the Churubusco Kindergarten

Despite the forecasts for horrible weather, it ended up not being all that bad!  I taught with Ryan.  We had around a dozen kindergarteners.  It was an okay day.  It wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't bad either.  Our students were excited but they weren't as enthusiastic and energetic as other groups I have had.  It was overcast and a comfortable temperature.  We got about half way down the lane and almost through our scavenger hunt when it began to pour.  We were close to the bird observatory, so we started walking really fast to it.  Luckily, the rain stopped about two minutes later.  The kids really liked the observatory and they responded well to most of the activities.  I got them to be silent for almost two minutes with 1-2-3 Hush.  It was quite impressive.

One of the hardest things with this group was the dynamics overall.  Whenever one student found something, they would all crowd around and try to see it and touch it at once.  They could not undertsand the concept of waiting or taking turns.  They all wanted to see everything right away no matter how many times I asked them to back up or be patient.  This was kind of a buzz kill and rather frustrating at times.  It was especially frustrating at the vernal pool.  They were very pushy when waiting for us to help them  move the critters they found into the tray.  It made it hard to help the students who had been waiting in line the longest.  It was difficult again when we were trying to examine all of the critters that they had found.  They couldn't all see so we had to move it to the dock to give them more space.  I was able to roll with it and try to accomodate but it was just difficult to facilitate things at times.

Overall I think that they learned some things and had fun, which is the most important part.  Our afternoon schedule was a little different.  They all did the straw ride and snake show together.  We also had an extra song and the puppet show.  The group that was at the Farmstead got to use Don for the snake show, so we had to use Sippy for the first time.  I ended up getting to hold Sippy for a really long time after the snake show and she was really great!  She wasn't tense at all and I really enjoyed it.  I'm glad to be getting over my fear of holding snakes.