Teaching Day One: Pre-School!

Monday, May 5th 2014
Trinity Pre-Schoolers
Today our visitors were from Trinity Pre-School.  It was great!  I am incredibly happy with how it went.  I team taught with Ryan and Jordan.  In our group we had four students and one father who came as a parent chaperone.  Our kids were awesome.  They were very respectful and well behaved.  They were awfully quiet right after we took them outside, but once we were on the trails they came out of their shells.  They were very enthusiastic.  They pointed out so many things; we had to stop multiple times in a minute to look at something.
I love how they got so excited over even the smallest of things.  Another thing I enjoyed was how easily they caught on.  One of the first things we found and showed them a walnut.  From then on every single time they found one they pointed it out and got very excited, even though we had just seen one.  It really made my day when before we even got to the vernal pool, one child said "This is so much fun!"  On our way back from the vernal pool multiple children in our group made comments like "I am having so much fun today!", "Can you come back with us when we leave?", and "This is the best field trip ever!"  It consistently amazed me (and still does) how they were so involved, engaged, and enthusiastic.
I really don't have anything negative to say about today.  We had one fall which brought some tears, but they didn't last long and the child was fine in less than five minutes.  I suppose another negative thing is that at the very, very end we had one child accidentally touch poison ivy.  We were able to wash it off with the spray bottle and then get her inside to the restroom to wash her hands really well within five minutes.
From a pedagogical standpoint, it took more effort to incorporate all three of us and make sure that we all had equal opportunities to teach and lead activities.  They did so well with all of the activities.  When we asked them to find something green, they found something green and then they just continued on pointing out things that were other colors.  I love this age because they are so easily able to make connections between things and they just catch on so easily.  Overall, today was a great first day of teaching and I am very excited for the days to come.