I'm tired of tykes titles (but not tired of the tykes)

but clearly not yet tired of alliteration (as though that's ever going to happen.)

Yesterday was yet another fly by the seat of my pants operations. We sang a couple of songs from Tanzania that I learned way back at the beginning of last year- and they worked a treat.

The first one "Kalele" is a welcoming song that is great because you can put in each child's name (wonderful since I still am struggling with the names) and then they giggle or roll their eyes back in to their head (that was a weird reaction) or turn bright red or grin or curl up into a little ball.

Green class nursery is my first class each week and I feel a bit bad about them because they're the experiment class- is this going to work? Is this enough material? Do I bring the instruments out? Are they going to enjoy this? Is it engaging? I find all of this out in green class. Or rather, I begin to find this out and then refine as the day goes on.

The thing about 'Kalele' is that you can, at any point in the song, throw in this bit where you have a call and response "hey!" shouty thing- which is totally fun- but a helpful tip is to not do it after every child's name in a class of 20+ kids. Also, make sure that you're singing in head voice instead of chest voice so that you don't go totally hoarse by the time you get to blue class nursery. These are the sorts of things I learn in green class nursery. I felt bad about it too- because their attention was totally wandering by the time we got halfway through the group- but you can't not include half of their names, that would be *devastating* and you also can't totally change how the song goes halfway through. That would be totally bewildering.

I was pleased to hear after school that the playground/field area had been filled with song as everyone was singing the two songs that I taught this week. Apparently non-stop- which I can see would be annoying for the teachers, but I was chuffed.

I found out this week that I get to write a lesson plan grid for the next term with learning objectives, activities, resources, topic links, and learning outcomes. Surprise! I kind of love the fact that I have been given so much autonomy and am only beginning to have supervision now; in my third week of doing the job. I won't have a proper meeting with my upper school counterpart until next week at the earliest and I've been enjoying the ferreting out process of figuring out all that my job actually entails- things like writing a term long lesson plan.

Wednesday was gorgeous and I hadn't yet gone out to the garden- so I wandered around a bit after my last class and ended up getting heavily involved in a rocket ship trip with stops in Spain, Ecuador, and Tanzania to gather pebbles. I kept trying to leave and let them get on with playing by themselves, but my hand was very firmly grasped and it was clear that I was going to be staying. I loved that they didn't change how they were playing just because I was there- I was just another one of their playmates- albeit quite a lot larger.