This was my last week before the Christmas break. We were once again a full classroom of children. The main theme that the nursery was focusing on was Christmas, as this holiday was coming up.

The children all helped and came together to put together lots of different material to create a massive Santa Claus.

One child picked up some cotton wool and began to use this as Santa’s beard. Another picked up some glue and used this to stick down some red glitter to colour Santa’s outfit and coat in. One child (N aged two) was sitting next to another child (A aged four) and he started spilling glitter all over the Santa. Meanwhile, the four year old had gotten upset and he was painting Santa’s outfit in.

The children also sat down collectively to sing Christmas song to learn them for their Christmas play.

The morning started of slow and stressful too. A little boy aged two spent about two hours attached to me. It was only after 15 minutes or so I spoke to another practitioner and raised the fact that he might be getting a temperature or perhaps not feeling well in general. She went to get the thermometer to check his temperature and noticed that his temperature was in fact very high.

They were confident enough to give me the responsibility of looking after him as they called his parents to come and pick him up. I had to check him temperature every 30 minutes and note down any changes.

This was the first challenge I had faced at the nursery, and it was good to gain the experience and knowledge on how to respond without making the child scared or uncomfortable. Furthermore, I was a real-time experience where I oversaw the child and it gave me an idea of problems that I might face if this was my career.