Rewards always outweigh.

This last week was rough...literally.

Rough-housing, running, tackling, wrestling, climbing, pushing, grabbing- you name it. Rough.

My class has been wild and crazy recently, and hard to manage. It's not horrible, since they are not actually trying to be mean or hurt anyone, they are just being boys and loving to wrestle. I am not against kids wrestling, although it gets hard and out of control very quickly in a school setting. Let's just save all your wrestling for home, okay?

I feel like I've spent the last few days being in the rodeo or something and trying to lasso everyone in and teach them kindness and gentleness.

Today was a ray of sunshine. As a teacher, there are many demands that you must meet, all along with taking care of the kids and paying attention to them. Kids are smart- they know when they don't have your full attention.

Today was one of those great days where I felt like I still got done everything done that I needed to, yet still had time to just be with the kids. To engage in their play with my full attention. Get down on the floor and really enter their world.

They LOVE it when I do that, and I in return love it too.

Here are few favorite snip-its of the day:

1. One of my kids came up to me, unprovoked, and gave me a hug and said she wanted to be a teacher just like me when she grew up.

2. Another hug from a boy who put his cheek right next to mine and gave me the biggest smile.

3. Laying on the floor and being the "patient" while they examined me with doctor tools. (For some reason, kids think it's so hilarious when teachers lay down on the floor.)

4. Learning about wind and air during our large group time this morning and blowing up a balloon (we are learning about weather this week). I let the balloon go and they watched it zoom all over the room as the air screeched out. They freaked out and loved it so much. It's so much fun to watch kids be completely engaged and love learning.

5. Next week, we are learning about dinosaurs. I change the books in the reading center every Thursday, so today I put out some dinosaur books. I got one from the library about the biggest dinosaurs, and each page had not one, but TWO flip open flaps, so the dinosaur was three pages long. One picture had a T-Rex eating some sort of smaller dinosaur. It was somewhat graphic, but one of my boys loved it so much. He literally looked at the same picture for 20 minutes and showed it to every other child in class (and also one teacher and two parents who came in during that time). We talked about how sometimes bigger animals eat smaller animals and what that meant for the T-Rex to be eating him. He was entranced and it was so neat to be a part of his learning. Watching kids be excited is so awesome!

Today was a great day. The rewards always outweigh whatever negatives happen. :)