Rachel's Blog. Day 3.

I was fortunate to be able to return to my same classroom for the third day in a row. When I got there most of my kids were just sitting around waiting for breakfast to start so I suggested that we do a couple of puzzles. I helped + and $ with one puzzle that included the different animals for each letter of the alphabet. After everyone ate breakfast we went outside where I was the designated swing pusher again but ( informed me that I didn't push as high as others so I couldn't push ( anymore on the swings. However ! and + still asked me to push them on the swings for most of the time we were out there. I also felt like I was mediating a lot during recess because everywhere I looked some kid was crying, whether it was from an injury or hurt feelings. After we came back in from recess, my teacher started asking the kids that were more well-behaved to come up and get their name tags and pick a center of their choice. She got distracted with helping another student or maybe it was another teacher, I don't remember, but I was able to call on the students that were well-behaved. After calling on each student, my teacher wanted the students to spell our their name tags to me which was really neat to see how far along each student is with spelling/reading. Some of the students knew instantly what each letter of their name was while others had no clue about any of the letters in their name. I played in the blocks center with !, *, ), and + where we built a really cook structure that I actually took a picture of but my camera died today, so I can't show it. Sadness. Anywho, I also played cashier/store with ! and after showing the students how to scan the different plastic food items, *,),+ and = all wanted to play with us. I felt bad because there was no room for that many kids in that one area to all share the one cash register. It ended up working out because while some of us played store, the others were listening to a book on tape. I played dress-up with ! and + which I have pictures of also. After these centers, it was time for our day in the media center but when we got there it was a lot of just sitting around. We found out that the librarian was stuck in traffic so she wouldn't be able to make it for the duration of our allotted library time. Our assistant teacher read 5 little ducklings to the kids (basically like 5 little monkeys) and then we headed back to the classroom for lunch. Lunch was fairly uneventful yet delicious and after lunch we had nap time. I mostly just helped my teacher get on the internet from her laptop and also helped her figure out how to connect her laptop to the printer similarly to yesterday. Other than helping her with that I mostly read Curley for the duration of nap time. Overall, my time at school today was somewhat uneventful yet it was still a good day. I was asked if I was teacher at recess by another student from another class and I almost wanted to say yes because I feel so included in my current classroom. So far I've learned a lot while being here at Cherokee and I hope to absorb as much as I can for the remainder of the trip. I am still really excited to see my kids tomorrow, I'm really glad I stayed with my original class!