The ups and downs of nursery life...

So, I'm having a heck of a time balancing the administrative aspects of coordination and then on top of that doing all the teaching and lesson planning. And then having to explain to the volunteers that are assisting me, what their role is in the classroom, as well as the mothers who we have each one volunteer one day a week (sort of as a parenting class sort of thing)...

It is not your role to watch me try and control 10 kids on my own. It is your role to assist me in maintaining order!! Grr.. I'm not a teacher, and even that seems common sense to me. When I'm having difficulty getting the kids to pay attention, you don't sit back and just watch me. But OK.. i understand that maybe these are all things I need to explain very explicitly... The folks helping me, have been a huge help in other areas... I'm not ungrateful... 'cuz I wouldn't have been able to keep my sanity this far if it wasn't for their help. Though, they could be of more use.. So yeah, apparently I'm also training volunteers as well. Oh, though I should mention that one of my mates, Jean Claire, has been super awesome in helping in the nursery.. taking on teaching some of the lessons, super great with discipline and helping with everything else without any sort of prompt... Elliot has been great too and the only difficulty has been his lack of spanish, but he's good with discipline and paraticipating in the nursery :)

In my state of frenzy of trying to start the morning and talk to 2 mothers at the same time (since the volunteers i had assisting me that morning didn't speak any spanish, I couldn't leave it up to them to lead the class), I allowed two more children into the program, just making things much more difficult, but my head was spinning at the time and it didn't come mind that:
1. It was going to make things more difficult for myself by adding two more kids.
2. It's better for the mothers to know and learn that if they want to participate in a program, they must follow the rules, which included going to several meetings, and having attended from the beginning of the program.

But oh well.. One of the new girls who came today is very ready for school and wasn't difficult to integrate into the class. The other family came, but just to let us know she couldn't attend because she had very bad tooth problems (her cheek was very swollen). Hopefully, she'll be easy to integrate into the class....

Whew..

On the flip side (yay, there's a flip side or I'd be having a nervous breakdown and ready to come back to the states right now)... the kids are absolutely adorable... They already have been copying things I say often... For those who have spent time with me long enough, you know i say "OOPS!" all the time. When I've done something, when someone else does something, an "OOPS!" comes out. Well one of my kids has decided to do the same hahah... It was adorable too because it was out of no where.. he came and tapped me on the shoulder and said "OOPS!"

The kids are real sponges and have been learning things really fast. The other day we sang a color song that included spanish and english (sing with me! to the tune of: Fere Jacques) Red is rojo, green is verde, blue- azul, negro-black, Yellow-amarillo, purple is morado, Brown-café, gray is gris.... So anyway, today I showed them some colors and they remembered the song from yesterday and were saying "blue azul!" and "rojo red!".... yay! that's exciting for me hehe... today we read a book that had sentences in english and spanish, and they were very eager to repeat the english words after me. Probably more so because they see the amusement in my face of them speaking english.... so adorable!!

But alas, they seem to be in the storming phase and in addition to all the stress I've mentioned above, they have begun to stop listening to me, and doing things to test my patience... which i generally have alot of, but will likely turn into an ulcer if i dont figure out how to manage it soon!! :P

Any tips welcome. As I've said, I've never worked with kids 3 & 4 before, so I need all the help i can get. Oh and if anyone's curious.. the budget for the nursery is $350. All the supplies it took to start it up was about $300.. ongoing budget is the rest...

Oh, and BTW, my knee is still F'd... continues to look like a fat, swollen knee.. can go upstairs properly now, but with extra support from railings when on that leg, but can't go downstairs without taking each step slowly and not bending my knee (cuz it doesn't support my weight going down). However, don't think it's anything a doctor can do anything about, so I'm just ace bandaging it and waiting for it to heal. Aleve helps.