Today is my seventh time in placement, time flies indeed.
As the previous two weeks, much focus is on writing and today the image used for the “I can see…” writing task is very chaotic, maybe a bit too much as the children got extremely distracted by it and started to draw rather than write.
After this, I entertained the whole group of 56 children by reading them a book. I have to say I was quite overwhelmed, mainly for the teachers who were part of the audience too. I managed to engage the children quite well, by waiting for them to complete the sentences and engaging in an afterward conversation. Also, as the book has a little song in it, some of the children performed one of their favourite nursery rhymes in front of the whole group. It was fun, and I like the bond I have managed to create with the children through these weeks. I thought that going once a week would have made it more difficult to become a familiar person to them, someone to have a bond with, but every time I am going now I am coming home with drawings that some of them made for me, and seeing my name spelt wrong has never been so flattering.
During busy time Natalie wanted to play with me. She went to the kitchen area and came back with a trolley full of food; I asked her what she was going to make, and she told me she wanted to prepare a soup. I then asked her if she knew the recipe by heart, she said she did and I told her that I wished I could learn it too so that I could make a soup for myself when she was not around. I have asked her what we could have done to solve this problem and she decided to write it for me. This become a full hour task! She wanted to write every word right and was very determinate about it, so I helped her in breaking down each word in sounds to make it easier. Usually she doesn’t really enjoy the writing session in the morning but doing it on something that interested her had made writing an essential component of her play.