A beach mural for the four year olds

The four year olds are learning about the beach. Words like splash, shell, pail, umbrella and sun are part of this unit. For whatever reason, Ana thought it would be wise for them to color (her favorite activity!) pictures of seashells that came with the ridiculous sticker-happy book we use. They then had to cut the shells out and glue them to a huge piece of brown paper. It took two class periods for the kids to do all of this (even after 1.5 hours some still weren't done).

Most of them were able to do this by themselves (even the cutting and gluing). One child, whom Ana and Erin (who went to this class from October to February) had nicknamed Juan Antonio "wild animal" because he is constantly disrupting the class, had finished coloring before today's class. He's really active so I had him help me put the other student's work into their cubbies (Ana though I could do this myself....I don't have any idea which kid's stuff goes where - I've only been to three classes). Then, she wanted me to help him cut his shells. I swear the kid was so excited about cutting that he almost took my fingers off with safety scissors.

She also made me supervise the gluing process which turned out to be hell because the kids don't understand anything about personal space. To get to a place around the poster kids were trampling others and flat-out stomping on the poster. One girl almost cried because a boy put glue on the H at the end of "The Beach" which she was supposed to be coloring pink. I told her to color around it and not to worry, but still, tears formed. At this point, Ana was out in the hallway chatting with the other preschool teachers.

The lesson was a large waste of time, especially because Ana had made me print out other pictures for the kids to color (these were tossed aside on the desk). I'm also pretty sure that I didn't speak English the entire time I was in the classroom. I'm not sure why I even went.