One week to go

My first day is drawing near! This Monday I'll be trotting into the pre-school alongside a group of nervous 3 and 4 year olds. I'm so excited to get to know all these new little people with whom I'll be spending the next year. At the same time though, I'm so nervous. What happens if the children are desperately home-sick and nothing I can do will console them? What if they run to their parents at the end of the day and tell them their new teacher is boring? What if the other teachers think my ideas are ridiculous and naive...?

But I can't think like that, I know. No sense wasting energy worrying. So, I've been working on my scrapbook and ideas, trying to be as prepared as I can be. At the open day the other teachers told me that we'll be basing a lot of our activities on the seasons, so I've been thinking of some Autumn crafts and activities.

Aswell as Autumn activites, I've been thinking of some practical life skills that may need to be developed. This may be the first time that many of the children will be part of a group outside their family, and there are certain skills they'll have to learn, like turn-taking, listening, empathy and kindness. So I've been working on some lessons around this too. I've been looking into Aistear; its section on Identity and Belonging is incredibly useful.

Would you like to have a peek inside my journal? :)

This is towards the start of my journal, where I'm keeping my ideas for activities to foster a sense of group belonging and personal identity. The 'My Home' project is taken from a story one of my lecturers told us about a pre-school in Norway (I'd love to visit there, check out their fantastic creches).

(As I do each activity in the pre-school I'll post more detailed lesson plans, as well as how they went and what I might improve in the future)

I thought it might be nice to do a project on birds. I've included stretching activites and physical education lessons, crafts, songs and circle time ideas.

And now, for some reason, the internet won't allow me to upload any more pictures! I'll put up some more pictures from my journal in the coming weeks.

So I'll say goodbye, until The First Day!