Whew!

The first two weeks of the new school year are over. I have 26 students in my morning class and 26 in the afternoon. Big classes. Oh well I guess I shouldn’t complain. At least I have a job.

This year is starting out a little different than the last 5 years. These children know how to get centers out and put them away without trashing everything. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe next week. I’ve put out about ten sorting centers for the children to work with. These centers are either store bought (transportation, dinosaurs, plastic fruit and vegetables, people, star fish) or homemade (colored pasta). I’ve been watching the children sort these objects into groups by color or shape. In the past I’ve had to worry about somebody eating the pasta or taking some of the store bought items home. These guys work together and on the whole cooperate with each other. I have a power point timer that I set and when it goes off they pick everything up and put it neatly away on the shelf. I only had to talk to them once about putting things away neatly and showed them what I wanted it to look like. I guess it was me saying that I needed to put some things away because there just wasn’t enough room on the shelf for everything I had out.