Tuesday with some Tykes

The thing about the tykes is that they get older. And the other thing about the tykes is that there is a lot of them. So the third thing about the tykes is that while I am honored that when they are in Year 1 and see me in the hallways and they say "I love you Miss Casey!" I am also guilty of having no clue what their names are. Sorry kiddo, but I remember that I love you too! Whoever you are!

Today I played with the laminator. Oh boy did I ever play with the laminator. Some things to keep in mind about the laminator:

1. Don't touch the plastic right as it comes out of the machine. It just got melted together. It is *hot!* Please, also, don't do this three or four times in a row- completely failing to learn the "it's HOT" lesson.
2. It is helpful if the laminator isn't pushed up against other things- this leads to the freshly laminated pictures coming out wrinkled and folded and makes for a difficult time when cutting the pictures apart.
3. Laminators are awesome. They make things all shiny and durable.
4. If you make your love of laminating known, you may be specially chosen to do a big chunk of the P.E. department's laminating next week.

I made a set of cards in order to do composition with the three year olds. Well. "Composition." I spent lunchtime forcing a harried group of exhausted teachers to look at my drawings and tell me if they could tell what they were. (Why do they put up with me? I don't actually teach on Tuesdays, I just do computer stuff and planning, and I must be *so* annoying to be around 'cause I'm all bouncy and doing art projects and they are *tired.* Miss Anita calls it my "play day." Which it is, so fair enough.)

I'm going to use the cards for a piece of music that has clearly defined sets of 8 beats. The cards are a set of actions with pictures of things like patting your knees, jumping, clapping, etc. (also a blank one! A laminated blank one so that we can use a dry erase marker on it! GENIUS!) So tomorrow I'm going to introduce each action with its card and then the tykes will get to A: choose what goes on the blank action card and B: choose what order the cards go in. See? COMPOSITION! Sort of.