A Day in the Life of a Kindergarten Teacher

Okay, I'll come straight out and say it... my main motivation in writing this particular entry is the excuse to include a bunch of pictures and show everyone how adorable our students are.  Consider yourself warned.  :)  So, having said that, here is a typical day in the life of these two kindergarten teachers:

8:45-9:10- Students arrive at school.  They put their coats away and are free to play until class starts.  Since our first lesson is art, often either Colleen or I are cutting, gathering, or arranging things for whatever the day's project is.  At some point a crowd of curious 5-year-olds will surround us, with a chorus of "Teacher, what is this?"

9:10-9:50- Art.  Every day we have a different project planned, some more involved than others.  We try to use different skills (drawing, tracing, painting, cutting, gluing, weaving) and reinforce the language they're learning.  "What is this?" "What color is it?" "How many are there?" "Is it big or small?"  They have made TP roll binoculars, lion masks, pasta necklaces, and picture frames, along with all the usual coloring and painting projects.  Once Colleen had them make sheep out of a TP roll, paper, and some cotton balls, and it was the biggest hit!  One boy wanted to carry it with him all day, and she had to bring an extra chair to the English lesson for it in order to get him to sit down!

 

10:00-10:40- Breakfast, including time to corral the kids downstairs and wash our hands before and after.  Have I mentioned that we get 2 out of 3 meals at school every day?  It's a pretty sweet deal. :)

 

10:50-11:20- English class.  This is the only part of our day that we were really trained for before we came!  Each week we have a topic like food, animals, or family, which we also try to incorporate into other lessons.  Three or four days out of the week we'll focus on new vocabulary (with a LOT of review the whole way) and the other day or two we teach a grammar concept (like pronouns or basic prepositions) or useful sentences. 

 

The kids pick it up really quickly, but the amazing thing is when we hear them using words or even sentence structures we haven't taught them!  They pick up so much, just from hearing us speaking all day. 

 

11:30-12:00- P.E.  This is probably the hardest lesson to control, but the kids need it after sitting still so much of the morning.  We play soccer, tag, and monkey in the middle.  We work on different skills, like kicking, catching, jumping, climbing, and throwing at a target.  When possible, we also try to play games that reinforce whatever they learned in their English lesson.  In the video below, the kids had to transfer all the noodles from one chair to the other, acting like whatever animal Colleen called out. 

 

 

12:10-12:40- Math (MWF) or Science (Tue/Thur).  Math right now is basically a lot of practice writing the numbers, counting, and saying them in English, although just this week they got their first color-by-numbers picture.  Science is just exploring the world, and learning the words to talk about it.  We've talked about the five senses, the weather, the different seasons, and different kinds of plants.

 

12:40-1:10- Recess!  Everyone's favorite time of day, including the teachers.  As long as they're not in danger of hurting themselves or each other, we get to just chill out for a while and talk. 



F bossing the boys around: a pretty accurate
representation of how things go down in our class

1:10-1:50- Lunch.  Though the kids mostly talk to each other in Azeri and Russian, this is a great time to work on manners- for example, saying "Teacher, can I have ketchup, please" instead of "Teacher, ketchup," and saying please and thank you.

2:00-2:30- Problem Solving lesson.  This is just a fancy way to say that this is the time of day when they play with blocks, put together puzzles, and play with clay. 

2:30-3:00- Music (MWF) or Skills (Tue/Thur).  The skills lesson is a time to do tracing worksheets, as well as do cutting, coloring, and matching activities in their workbooks. 

In the music lesson we teach them songs in English, thus far, mostly ones we grew up with, like "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" and "Rain, Rain, Go Away."  This week they're learning "The Hokey Pokey"!  Whenever possible, we try to find cartoons or videos of the songs to play on our laptops, which they love.

3:00-3:30- Review and Games
3:30-4:00- Snack time.
4:00- The kids go home and the grown-ups collapse in exhaustion!

You may or may not have noticed that there were often 10 minute gaps between classes.  The school here has built-in breaks for the children to play between lessons.

The whole class (at least that day) chillin' on the windowsill

One thing we love to do is teach them little games or tricks.  The latest is the high five thing- "Up high, down low, too slow!"  They can literally do that over and over again for 10 minutes if we let them.  Although they came up with a variation on it all by themselves.  If the person manages to slap your hand before you pull it away, they say "Too fast!"

P teaching them "Thumb War" (after we taught it to her)

So that's it!  Our super cute students.  It's not always easy to teach them (in fact, it almost never is) but it's certainly entertaining!



On a school-wide field trip to a bookstore last week

PS. As if this wasn't enough, I posted a few more on the "Pictures" page, as well as some that are not of the kids... although really, what fun is that?