Oh, to be a preschool teacher

I love teaching my kid English! Our classes are structured with specific subjects we change every week or two weeks, and definitely some subjects are harder for me, but getting to spend time with them and let them tell me their stories and show me their toys and stickers makes up for almost any difficulty. I say almost any, because sometimes the hard part is how quickly they change from topic to topic in their conversations. But, with a good nights sleep I can handle even that!

This week I have been teaching drama. Teaching drama to 4 year olds who know English is probably hard, but teaching English and drama seems nearly impossible. I have yet to get through an entire story in the 20 minute classes, or even get specific lines for specific characters. They want to be everything, and if they can't do that they want to run around and rename everything in the room to "apple" "lion" "tiger" or "teacher". (They know a lot more than that, but they think it's the funniest thing in the world to hear me say "noooo, it's not a ____")

Today however I tried to implement a new system to drama class. I decided to choose a song to act out for the entire class period. And because this was my first time experimenting, I chose a song that can have as many verses as a kid can think of animals: Old MacDonald!

However, even drama must have structure to it: I needed to have costumes and objects to talk about, so I couldn't let the kids choose all the animals. I brought masks for a cow, a pig, an elephant, and a dinosaur, as well as a costume for the farmer. They loved it and all wanted to wear the masks. I cant blame them...I like wearing the masks and pretending I'm the different animals. In fact, I'm pretty sure I enjoyed trumpeting like an elephant even more than they did! I may have chosen the elephant specifically for the excuse to trumpet like an elephant. Maybe. 

But I love that I have a job where I actually have legitimate excuses to trumpet like an elephant all day, or fly around like an airplane, or practice jumping for 20 minutes, or make animal noises, or do arts and crafts with kids who want to tell you everything and share all their triumphs with you. And aren't afraid to say, "teacha, I need help!" And the cutest thing is when we are lining up to walk places and all I need to say is "teacher Clara's class" and they all come running for me. I love my kids soooo much! I'm going to miss them if they don't come back after summer camp. It will be a sad day. But I'm not thinking about it yet. I'm just looking forward to teaching arts and crafts next week with them. :)