Year 2 Day 19: "Miss...There's No More Soap."

This is not something you want to hear when you're doing any activity with 5-year-olds involving paint. Messy. Drippy. Paint. Yet, this was the phrase for the day as each time a child was sent to wash their hands, they would come back reporting that there wasn't any soap. At one point, I thought a teacher assistant had taken care of the problem, as they knew where the soap was located and I did not, but something tells me it wasn't because they continued to ask about it for the rest of the day.

I was in the other Reception class today -- the one next door to the one where I supplied on Thursday and Friday, so I had the chance to meet the teacher I filled in for last week. She was really nice and allowed me to cover numeracy for both classes while she did phonics with them in return. The numeracy lesson involved identifying shapes and the children had to trace around a block of the shape and then paint it in. Most of them did really well and I was quite impressed. They especially loved when I would mark a tick on their paper with a smiley and tell them "well done!"

Once I returned home from school, I began getting some potatoes ready for Matt and I to have 'Cheesy Potato Pie' for our tea. Matt wasn't home but maybe forty minutes by the time I had put them on for a boil and sat down to relax. He carried on having his ritual evening-play with Myst (a time also known as "Daddy's Home") and the next thing he knew, he could see me fading quickly on the sofa. I didn't realise how tired I was because I felt I've had a reasonable amount of energy all day, but all of a sudden it hit me like a tonne of bricks. I was literally so drained that instant that Matt had to help me up the stairs so I could lie down. I seriously felt like a noodle! I have to admit that I was pretty upset about it as well because I wanted to just carry on as I do any evening, but it seems 1st trimester fatigue is back with a vengeance.

I feel a bit better after having a nap and something to eat, but I will know better from here on out to not push my limit. Still, I appreciate getting the work I am FINALLY and will take what I can until it gets to the point where I can't any longer.

Day 59 of 365: Smooth Sailing

I arrived this morning for my Year 2 post and was immediately informed I would be in Reception instead (this is like Kindergarten in the US). I wasn't sure what to expect, but for the most part I was pleasantly surprised. This was by far, the easiest and smoothest day I have had in supply teaching (spanning my massive 3-day career).

It was difficult to learn the children's names, mainly because there wasn't a "seating chart" of any sort since they didn't have seats. I worked with small groups in the morning on directional words (forwards, backwards, sideways, etc.) where we pretended to be robots outside. In the afternoon we sat in a circle and worked on listening skills with this cute little baby tiger called Lola. We talked about what it means to be good listeners and then passed Lola around the circle whispering an introduction to her and telling her what we liked to do at school. It was really precious to watch. Then Lola "played" some musical instruments for everyone to listen to carefully and the children had to guess the instrument she was playing.

It was a refreshing day compared to the last two. The kids were very well-behaved overall. So it was an absolutely lovely way to end the week.