Kindergarten Volunteer Visit

It's days like these that make me wish terribly that I could work part time.  It was so wonderful to be able to spend time at both my kiddos schools today.  Special helper with Sophie in the morning and then volunteering in Will's kindergarten classroom in the afternoon.  I love what I do and I love the security and benefits of my job, but I feel like I miss out on so much of their young lives that I want desperately to be a part of.  There really is no other alternative for our family, but I worry that I will resent having worked full time while the kids are young.  Everyone tries to tell me of the value of our current work/family life and I hear them... but I'm only pretending to believe it to make myself feel better.  I really don't want to work as much as I do.

 

Anyway, that rant aside, I was blessed to have a day off of work to spend with my little ones.  Following lunch with Sophie, I drove to Will's school, checked in at the office and walked down to his classroom where I was welcomed and invited to join the kids on the rug where they were practicing long and short vowel sounds with Mrs. Mullen leading from a chair in front of them.  She has a very cool method for verbally practicing vowel sounds and I loved seeing the kids watch her so intentedly.  They practiced letter sounds aloud too.  

Will got a big, silly grin on his face when I walked in and kept glancing over at me to see my reaction to everything they were doing and saying. He came to sit beside me after a bit and I just enjoyed being able to be there with him. 

After finishing up their time on the rug, Mrs. Mullen gave instructions for the kids to begin their center activities.  I cracked up when she finished her instruction announcements with "capiche?" and all the kids responded in unison "capiche!"  :)  Haha!

Center time is amazing.  There is so much going on in every area of the classroom and yet it's not chaotic at all.  Everyone knows where to be and what to do and they simply flow from one center to the next.  My job was to float around observing and assisting as needed. 

So there were students:

1) reading a poem and circling all the upper and lowercase b's in the text (the letter of the day)

2) measuring various objects according to how many snap-together blocks they measure up to

3) cutting and pasting pictures into categories of "fantasy" and "reality" (they'd been discussing nursery rhymes this week)

4) crafting a humpty dumpty out of colored paper pieces

5) writing the letter Bb

6) painting rainbows at the easle

7) practicing imaginative play in the kitchen area

8) working at educational games on the computer

9) "drawing" on the star board

10) reading in the book nook

They don't all reach ever center every day, but rather a few of them each day and changing up over the week.  It was really cool to observe and see how structured and routine the classroom is and how well the kids respond to it.

Following center time, the kids gathered their Comet folders, mail, backpacks and belongings and sat quietly in their seats until being dismissed for gym class.  While they were there, I stayed with Mrs. Mullen and we talked and talked while I helped her with some very simple stapling of homework packets for Friday.

Probably Will's favorite part of my visit was that he was counted in the tally of "parent pick ups".  Each day they assign the kids to different categories of assignments for the day, i.e. packing or buying lunch, bus riders or parent pick ups.  So on this day, Will was in a different category for his travel home and it was apparently such a huge novelty to him.  :)  Haha.  He announced it to Mrs. Mullen first thing that morning and then whispered it in my ear when he came to sit by me on the rug.  "I'm a parent pick up, mom!"  Yep, buddy, and I'm glad to save you from an almost hour long bus ride after school.  We arrived home by about 3:15 or 3:20 (as opposed to his normal drop off of 4 pm) and got immediately started on homework with a healthy snack and water bottle at his side.  I so wish this could be our routine most days.  :(  We've really got our evenings streamlined pretty well, but instead of 3:20, the evening begins at about 5:20 when we finally get ourselves unloaded and in the door.  Trust me... it's a world of difference when our daily time together is so limited and crunched.  So I'm just thankful for that wonderful day and the pleasant, relaxed evening that followed.

If only they could happen more often...