Mid-Term break for the Tykes

The tykes have two more days left in school before a two week long mid-term break. Though I am not overly pleased about the hit that my finances will take in those two weeks- I am thrilled, thrilled that the tykes will be having a break. Because today? They were monsters.

Classes went alright- the nursery classes are getting quite good at singing along with the emotion cards and one of the three totally has this whole "high" and "low" thing down. One of the other nursery classes totally has the whole "pig pile Miss Casey as she is trying to leave" thing down too.

The reception classes were mostly willing to sit tight and wait for their turn when conducting with the emotion cards and man-oh-man did we rock out with our vocal warm-ups.

Even garden time was nice: I made the mistake of running onto the field with the thought that if I got out their quickly- then everyone else would follow and we wouldn't have any of this straggling business. I misunderestimated (yes, misunderestimated) the effect that this would have. Namely that I then had to spend the whole of garden time running around playing reverse tag with 45 children.

Reverse tag: where the tykes are yelling "catch me! catch me!" while attached, limpet like, to your leg. The goal, really, is then to detach yourself in order to run to the other side of the field where you then wait for the swarm of tykes to catch up again and repeat their taunts. The secondary goal is to avoid as many pot holes in the field as possible so that the swarm doesn't tumble to the ground and start crying.

So actually- the only real issue was music club. Keeping in mind that music club has *20* tykes. The tykes are from all of the different classes so they don't necessarily know each other very well and there are some pretty significant size/attention differences between the youngest of the nursery children and the eldest of the reception children. All in one room. Just before mid-term break. After a long day's slog through school.

My usual tricks for calming them down/focusing them failed miserably. We tried using the Lycra where we bounce some teddy bears up and down- they nearly ripped a leg off of the medium bear. We tried Simama Ka- but half the kids had never heard it before and couldn't be bothered. We tried bounce and bounce and bounce and STOP- but the role play house in the corner was far more interesting, and besides: there were fights to pick!

There was kicking, yelling, tattling, rolling about on the floor, squishing, and poking. There was not much listening.

Fortunately Linda brought out the books again and that finally calmed enough of them down so that we could just sit for a bit and not pull tykes off of other tykes.

So what I'm saying is this: have a wonderful half-term break little ones. In two weeks you'll come back and we'll start learning the Christmas songs...